"an abortion saved my life."

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Well, if you believe Orwell, she must have known she wanted an abortion going in, right? Otherwise she wouldn't have mentioned that the doctor on call didn't perform abortions.

But no, I don't think that's what happened. I think when the woman arrived at the hospital, she didn't realize that loss of the fetus was a foregone conclusion, and insisted that they try to save the "baby". I think they called the on call doctor to try to do that, probably with a caesarian. And when he saw the situation, he realized it was hopeless and his performing a caesarian would kill the woman as well, so his interns tried to convince the woman to give up on the fetus, and just let the hospital find someone to do an "abortion" and try to save the woman at least. And I think she refused, which is why she never gave permission for the procedure.

And a senior nurse knew that was the only way to save her life, called the other doctor anyway, and the other doctor didn't try to get the woman's permission but just asked the husband, who was less emotionally invested with the fetus and more able to admit it was a lost cause. The husband gave permission and the second doctor saved the woman.

And then of course once the woman recovered and it was a fait accompli, the woman also admitted to herself that it had been the right thing to do. But since she didn't want to admit to herself that if they'd done what she'd wanted, she would have deprived her kids of a mother, she blamed the first doctor instead.

Why else would she write an article strongly implying that the doctor refused to perform an abortion, while carefully avoiding actually stating that? The reason she doesn't actually state it is because it wasn't true. And the reason she implies it is because she doesn't want to cop to the fact that the person who didn't want an abortion was herself.

That seems to me the only logical explanation for how the article is written.

There really just isn't anything in the article to support your conclusion. You have made too many unjustified assumptions and unfounded speculations along the way to construct that narrative. My explanation only assumes one thing that was not directly in the article, and that bit is at least implied. Thus, my narrative is more parsimonious. Therefore, according to a medieval monk, it should be preferred over yours in the absence of additional information.

I'd also like to point out here that there is a thing in emergency medicine called "implied consent". If you present yourself at a medical facility in a life threatening situation, you don't actually have to give verbal consent, nor sign consent papers. Unless you have specifically specified that you DO NOT want life saving or invasive measures, personnel are REQUIRED to act in the patient's best interest as coming to the hospital of your own volition implies that you want medical treatment. In this situation, the hemorrhaging pregnant woman's life would trump the dying non-viable fetal life. Personnel are ethically bound to do everything in their power to preserve the life of the mother unless she specified otherwise. (The husband signing consent was a mere formality.)

If this is a factual story (and it's possible, s**t happens) so many people dropped the ball on this case. The fact that this was obviously a teaching hospital would imply that it was a sizable facility, which would indicate that there should have probably been more than one OB on call. Regardless, if the doctor was being the asshat that this story indicated, the pt's primary RN should have acted as the patient's advocate as is her job (or not waited so long to do so).

Unless you understand the workings of these sorts of hospital departments, you can't even comprehend how difficult it would be for this sort of "oops" to happen. There are protocols and specific systems in place for situations like this. Either someone said they made a phone call and didn't, or someone thought someone else made the appropriate phone call. Someone should have noticed that this doctor was doing nothing to treat this woman, should have noticed that there was no transfer of care to another physician. Physicians don’t make their own phone calls. Unit Secretaries makes those calls. The US should have realized the call had not been made. The US would be required to log the transfer of care, accepting physician’s name and time of acceptance. If this didn’t occur, she should have asked her Charge Nurse. The Charge Nurse should have then gone to the House Coordinator. The HC would be required to confront the physician, instruct the US to make appropriate phone calls, then call the CEO if additional pressure was needed.
Why were they not, at the very least, transfusing? This woman was bleeding out. You can get units of FFP in minutes.



1. A fetus is not viable at 20 weeks.
(not necessarily @ Inuyasha)
2. This woman did not need an abortion; she needed a D&C.
3. In a medical environment, a miscarriage is called a “spontaneous abortion”, the woman might have gotten confused by terminology.
4. She may not have flat out asked for an abortion if she was not told that was the only solution.
5. If this story is factual, the doctor was doing nothing to treat this woman, nor was he seeking appropriate treatment for her. The only treatment is invasive and surgical. It would appear he was leaving her to bleed out. Apparently, at some point, someone told her the physician does not perform abortions.
6. When a physician agrees to be “on-call” at a facility, that usually means they get the emergencies and the “un-doctored” patients, which means the people who have not received any neonatal care, usually crackheads, the homeless, and others who don’t take the best care of themselves. These are generally the cases you can count on to be anything but routine. On-Call physicians don’t get to say, “I won’t provide that service” if it’s within their scope of practice and deemed medically necessary. Assuming that this is an actual OB who doesn’t know how to do the procedure is just ridiculous.

We had EMS bring in a home birth gone wrong. The mother was hemorrhaging blood faster than we could pump it into her. Our On-call docs are not required to be on-site during their whole 24 hour shift. So the OB had to be called in. The ER doc was forearm deep in this woman's vagina for 45 minutes applying pressure until the OB was scrubbed up for surgery. (The ER doc rode the gurney to OR with the patient.) If we would have had problems getting the OB, we would have called the back up. If we couldn't get the back up, we'd have called the Trauma surgeon. If we couldn't get the trauma surgeon, we'd start calling near by facilities for emergency transport.

I'm not a Labor and Delivery Unit Sec.. I'm an ER Unit Sec, but the protocols and chains of command can't differ that much. Both are regulated by EMTALA laws. There are specific patient rights and provider responsibilities.

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Yes, and then BurntOutMom's post adds some behind-the-scene detail.

Labor almost always takes hours upon hours, folks. It's not like on t.v.
Even if the fetus was viable, the woman would have bled out WAY before she delivered.
Further, the fetus was cut off (completely or nearly so, from the sound of it) from the oxygen it would normally receive through the placenta. The baby was likely already dead before the doctors even acted.
This is not an abortion story.
This is a miscarriage story.
To suggest this woman aborted her child is to add insult to injury.

It was the woman herself who used the term "abortion". I agree, though - she's trying to make it an abortion story when it isn't. Abortion may save lives on some occasions, but this wasn't one of them.

You are talking to someone whose sister was a premie, maybe not quite that early, but I still know a fetus is viable at 20 weeks, the odds of survival isn't the greatest, but still. I also know at that stage a premie would not induce that much stress on the mother if the doctors had induced labor. The child may have died later, but the point is there was still a chance the child would live.

As for your home birth song and dance, we're not talking about an 8-10 pound infant, we're talking at most a 5 pound infant, odds of those kind of health complications is significantly less.

a baby at that stage requires a specialised enviroment at the very least, it is around the same time the first coherent brain activity starts.

at week 25 the odds are 50/50 if the baby is in a hospital with all the equipment needed.
the youngst birth was at week 22 and it was as much luck as anything that made that possible.

False, brain activity starts around day 48 at the latest, if I remember correctly it is detected earlier than that.



That's only partly true, it depends on the size of the infant, for a premie whom is only 20 weeks along the time duration of labor wouldn't be that long because dialation wouldn't need to be as large.

Inuyasha - No baby has EVER survived being born at 20 weeks gestation. Please stop saying there was any chance of this baby surviving. There was NONE. It is not medically possible at this time.

Do you think you need to prove the fetus was viable in order to defend your belief that it constituted a human life? Some people hold that view, but you can disagree with them. You don't have to argue your position using their premises.

[quote="Inuyasha"

False, brain activity starts around day 48 at the latest, if I remember correctly it is detected earlier than that.

.[/quote]

Trivial brain activity (which even lower order mammals exhibit) is not equal to self-consciousness, the ability to reason, intention formations --- the stigmata of personhood.


You keep bringing up these bogus matters. Fetuses are NOT people. They have no rights. They are the property and product of a woman's body and carried at some risk to the woman. If the woman wishes to go ahead with the birth then afterward her issue receives the protection of Law. Not before.

ruveyn

I have 11 cases of survivors at 20 weeks. Their weights varied from 12 to 22 ounces (339 to 663 gm). There are two cases at 19 weeks including baby Kenya King who weighed 18 ounces (510 gm) and was 10.5 inches (26.5 cm) long. She dropped to 13 ounces (370 gm), had heart surgery, survived and went home with her mother. We have her photo from the Miami Herald in our book. Our last contact with her was when she was about five years old, at which time she was a normal, healthy little girl. (Abortion Questions and Answers, pp. 98, 99, 2003.)
http://www.christianliferesources.com/? ... cleid=1253

Trying to find the specific cases, I'm not denying that it is a longshot, but there is information out there to suggest it has happened.

So what. Inside the mother they were her property and without rights. Outside they have the protection of Law. Fetuses are not people. They are parasitic things that live on life support from the mother's body. Than can neither weave nor spin. All they can do, once outside, is sh*t in their diapers and suck on a teat.

All humans are born as primate beasts with no knowledge, no self control and little or no virtue. The only thing that have going for them is being potentially useful in the future.

ruveyn

You can't draw an arbitrary line and say at one instant someone is a person and until that point they aren't. It sounds to me like you are advocating slavery.

The Law does just that. Fetuses are not persons under the Law. That can be changed by arbitrary fiat, of course, once again proving that the Law is an Ass.

ruveyn