Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.
Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’...
Speaking personally, I’d rather go to prison for the rest of my life than let someone in front of me die of something I could prevent.
Bingo.
If you read the article, almost all of the staff in this case were all making the recommendation that the patient’s extreme loss of blood demanded more immediate intervention, and several doctors concluded that D&C was needed.
This is the result of one rogue doctor ignoring signs and symptoms and disregarding sound clinical advice because they believe their career matters more than a young woman’s life.
If there are more patients who may face medical issues because the state chose to lock me up for doing the right thing, that is not on me. That is on the state.
When I was younger, there was a regular where I worked who was a doctor who went to prison for performing abortions back when they were illegal. He did not regret what he did, and he provided me with some sound advice about doing the right thing in the face of adversity that I still carry with me to this day.
My dude, my guy, are you talking about the doctors not at this facility that ProPublica talked to after the case? Because the only two staff I recall from the article who were mentioned to be treating Ngumezi at the time were nurse Esmeralda Acosta who said nothing about D&C and Dr. Andrew Davis, the one who recommended misoprostol.
Thank you for pointing all this out. People like to talk big online without a second thought and it’s good when someone has the energy to reveal their mental deficiencies.
Over a dozen doctors confirmed to ProPublica after the fact that D&C was needed, something I’m sure Davis himself recognized. We’re in agreement there. Not a single one of those doctors placed the blame on Davis; instead, they correctly blamed it on the law. The way you phrased your previous comment, intentionally or not, implies that there were multiple doctors who wanted to intervene but that Davis somehow undermined them.
The point of this paragraph wasn’t that “all the staff except Davis agreed she needed a D&C”. The point is that Davis was forced into malpractice by a christofascist law and then ignored the notes about bleeding by multiple nurses because, again, his other option (proper care for heavy bleeding) was a potential first-degree murder charge. And I can imagine OB-GYNs don’t want to face a malpractice suit every time they have to treat a patient with a life-threatening miscarriage because of what their fascist government effectively forces them to do. That wasn’t him “going rogue” while the nurses stood in solidarity bravely willing to go to risk jail with him like you’re implying.
Also, to call it not wanting to “risk his career” is disingenuous as fuck. What Davis did here is risk his career through malpractice; what OB-GYNs in Texas are doing by giving proper care is risking their career and the rest of their life. This is the position these doctors are placed in.
I just hope this man never gets to practice medicine again for what he did.
I am just getting sick of people using these dying mothers as a “See, you get what you deserve” argument to take the holier-than-thou stance against these oppressive governments, when really it comes down to the individual acts of persons who perpetuate injustice by choice.
Do we forgive the guard at the concentration camp just because their oppressive government would punish them for disobedience?
Oh, to be clear: fuck that stance. The whole sentiment around “Oh, well you voted for Trump to oppress you, so you deserve to be oppressed” is gross. I certainly hope people who voted for these policies learn, and to that end, I moderate [email protected], but short of the leopards turning on themselves and getting their own faces eaten, I think we need to equally adamantly support the rights of these people who did vote for their own oppression. (Moreover, those who assume someone voted for this or failed to vote just because they’re from a certain state is something I’ve actually seen, and that’s just asinine.)
That said, comparing OB-GYNs who studied to help women who are now being thrust into this dilemma to camp guards who – I cannot emphasize this enough – volunteered to be there with the express and sole purpose of imprisoning and killing marginalized groups such as Jews is not at all comparable and demonstrates an extreme degree of black-and-white thinking.
Many members of the German military were drafted. The SS made up a large portion of camp personnel and was largely a volunteer corps, but had plenty of conscripted members by war’s end. Moreover, most camps were manned by general members of the Wehrmacht who were largely drafted. Short story is that a lot were there involuntarily but still bear the responsibility of complicity.
That is beside the point though, and I want to stress that I am not trying to paint these comparisons as equivalent and am not sure how you reached that conclusion. My point involves the way in which we identify culpability and how we can easily apply it one way in one extreme situation but for some reason are refusing to do so for a less extreme but similar situation. Call it invoking Godwin’s law, but it’s not for nothing that I draw the comparison, because this is just an early stop on the same fascist road. “Just following orders” is a long-understood enabler of fascism and it manifests in more ways than one.
At the end of the day, a mother is dead because a doctor was unwilling to provide the medical care necessary to save her life, and we attribute this to a law that medical professionals are being compelled to obey. I see most people in this thread willing to forgive the terrible things that are happening before our eyes, because the doctor had no choice, right? It’s easier to say that blame rests solely with a small cadre of villains in government and absolve everyone else involved of responsibility.
So the million dollar lawsuit question is, if the restrictive anti-abortion law did not exist, would the doctor have done anything differently? If no, then the malpractice lawsuit coming his way anyways is deserved. But if the answer is yes—if he knew the right thing to do but chose not to do it because he was just following the law—then he should be held responsible for that woman’s death and deserves worse than a mere lawsuit.