Decanted: Some idiocy has shown up on my dash
Apparently people don’t know what a transvaginal ultrasound is. And instead of Googling it to educate themselves, they have chosen to bray their ignorance all over. Here! Let me educate you!
What is a transvaginal ultrasound?
A transvaginal ultrasound is an…
The people doing the transvaginals, though, are often not the doctors providing abortions. There is a whole train of people you have to see before you ever get that far. Doctors and nurse midwives and pharmacists and others are the ones who hold the power for women wanting a vast array of medical care that is safe and legal. In no way do I believe that every doctor who provides OY/GYN care behaves that way, because you are right that the ones who provide abortions do have to do these things for safety.
It doesn’t change the fact that if you want birth control in the US, or myriad other procedures, you are often faced with a doctor or nurse or pharmacist who will hold that hostage until you submit to something you may or may not need or want.
But it’s legislature that puts those policies into place, not medical professionals. Note that I said “medical professionals” here and in my previous post, not physicians, because I’m not going to school to be a physician. I’m one of those people that you say hold women hostage.
It’s just a bit hurtful to me to read this when I am spending ten years of my life learning how to help people who are sick, and I just loathe that these fucking asinine laws are put in place. My professional school, which is a combined campus with medical, pharmacy, physican’s assistant, and physical therapy schools, has constant activities fighting for women’s rights. There are plenty of healthcare people who are anti-choice, yes, but as I said, there are more of us who are FOR women’s rights and AGAINST this kind of stuff.
As an aside, there are some doctors who brush off patients or make mistakes and the patients’ lives are hugely impacted by this. There is legitimate basis for mistrust of the medical community, not at all because most of us do this stuff, but because we have an enormous power to hurt people. I get that.
I just hate that with all of the work that I do and how I am such a huge advocate, I am being called a medical rapist who witholds from women their right to competent medical care. That is the last thing I would ever want to do.
Point out to me where I said all of them behave this way, or where I called YOU specifically a medical rapist, please? I was pretty careful not to say “every medical provider everywhere does this”.
The people who told me I couldn’t have a non-hormonal IUD? They were not acting under anything other than their own “OMG IT KILLS BABIES AND YOU CAN’T HAVE IT”. The nurse midwife who wouldn’t let me get a consult for birth control because I hadn’t had an annual pap, even though the current guidelines do not require annual paps any longer, was not acting under any legislation. When I had to made THREE appointments to get a new IUD after my abortion, because the nurses and doctors that I saw either didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about, or ONCE AGAIN just simply didn’t want to give it to me, they were not acting on any legislation. They were railroading me away from something that I knew for a fact that I had a right to. Had I not been insured, my life would have been significantly more complicated by these people.
It’s great that you are working at being a good medical professional. I hope you carry that compassion into your career. Try to step back, though, and see that this is not about you, personally, this is about a bigger picture where, yeah, medical professionals are, in fact, holding care hostage and forcing women to have to do work arounds or go without care that they need or want because of their own prejudices.
Oh my god, I am going to get a sampler cross-stitched that reads “Do not get in fights on the internet; it always makes you feel worse” and hang it over my monitor.
I am very sorry for adding my voice to this conversation when, as I said before, there is a very legitimate reason to be upset with how the medical community often treats patients. I am also sorry if it sounded as if I was at all belittling or not taking your experiences seriously. You should have never gone through any of that and should have been treated with the respect that you deserve as an adult woman.
Since starting on this path, I have had a lot of people say rude things to me for being involved in the medical community. I’m getting better at handling it, but I’m not there yet. Thank you for helping me learn. I hope that you don’t have to experience anything so awful at times when what you need and deserve is legitimate compassion and help.
