Not Celebrating Much

“Fourth of July Parade Halted Due To Shooting.”

This is the most American headline, ever.  A young white man climbed up a ladder to the roof of a building on the Highland Park, IL parade route with an AR15.  The death toll so far is said to be 6, with many hospitalized.  What is it going to take?

I, personally, don't see much to celebrate this day.  Justice Thomas has said that gay and trans rights, contraception, same sex marriage, and privacy of medical records are on the line next.  We're truly heading toward a dictatorship.  Jim and I keep hoping that we die before it's complete, but they're moving right along with killing elections.

Next session the SC will be considering North Carolina's desire to implement the independent legislature concept.  This would allow the state legislature to pick the electors, irrespective of who the citizens voted for.  They can all be dictators for life!  Yay!  Many of the lawyer pointy heads are saying this is not what the constitution says/means when they say states control how elections are run, but the Gang of 6 will probably go along with it because they want the old white men to stay in power.

And then there is the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  It's already affecting women's health care.  Pharmacists are denying methotrexate to women because one of its uses is treating ectopic pregnancy without surgery.  Seems like a good idea, eh?  No cutting, no pain, woman does not bleed to death.  But nooooooo.  Pity the unfortunate women of child bearing age who have lupus, rheumatoid arthritis or cancer.  No treatment for them because they might get pregnant. 

Methotrexate is in a class of medications called antimetabolites. Methotrexate treats cancer by slowing the growth of cancer cells. Methotrexate treats psoriasis by slowing the growth of skin cells to stop scales from forming. Methotrexate may treat rheumatoid arthritis by decreasing the activity of the immune system.
The most common drug used to treat ectopic pregnancy is methotrexate. This drug stops cells from growing, which ends the pregnancy. The pregnancy then is absorbed by the body over 4–6 weeks. This does not require the removal of the fallopian tube.

This is a twitter thread I screen scraped from Threadreader.  It discusses how saving the life of the mother will probably work in Kansas.

Lisa Larson-Bunnell

🧵1/For those of you who don’t know me well, I am a healthcare regulatory attorney and work in a hospital. I work in a state that has banned abortions at my hospital except those necessary to “save the life of the woman.” Let me explain how this works in practice.….  

2/I get a call from a physician who tells me that our patient is 28 weeks pregnant and the fetus is dying from a naturally occurring condition. As the fetus dies, the woman’s body can quickly become infected and she can die as well. So, why are they calling me?

3/Because in Missouri (in public facilities), if there is still a heartbeat, it is considered an abortion to terminate the pregnancy. So, the question becomes…is the woman close enough to dying to justify the abortion.

4/Let me repeat that: me, a lawyer, has to help a trained physician make the decision of whether their patient is near enough to death (under the law) for them to take action that is agreed to by the patient (and often their spouse).

5/I can’t tell you how messed up this is. This is what we were already dealing with. Missouri’s new trigger ban resulting from the fall of Roe has made things even worse. These are women who did not plan to terminate their pregnancy.

6/They are wives, mothers, sisters, and employees who are dealing with a tremendously difficult situation. Their lives are risked by delaying life saving care.

7/And, under the heartbeat rules (now standard in several states), there is serious question about whether an ectopic pregnancy can be treated before the Fallopian tube ruptures (a life threatening condition).

There's more, but those were the high points of her thread.

In other news of the bad there is this:

And this:

Here in the GPNW it rained most of the day.  It stopped about 2:30 and the sun came out.  As always, we feel badly for the people who made the effort to pack up the spouse and the kids and head for the great outdoors.  When we used to spend summers in Issaquah we always had to remind ourselves that summer did not start until July 5.