This is where it really does become an issue that the AMA changed the definition of contraception to call the pill a contraceptive. This is not a peripheral concern, but a major belief held by a large amount of people. Also, you do not address the issue that the doctor refused my request for information on alternatives. Why weren't all my options for birth control discussed?
Doctors are certainly not reluctant to let people know that if they take antibiotics while on the pill, they may get pregnant. (Which, by the way, is also missing a step. Antibiotics have never gotten anyone pregnant in and of themselves...) If I were to have an appendectomy or colonoscopy, the doctor would tell me clearly what the procedure would entail. I think that moral objections to birth control would be very common if more people knew just how it worked.
You are overgeneralizing when you speak of information overload. Patients are routinely told about side effects that have a very small chance of happening. Also, seeing as this is essentially a moral issue, you cannot argue it "moral issues aside."
I won't dispute that life beginning at conception is a belief held by a large fraction of the population. It does not follow that all people who hold that belief follow it to the logical conclusion. It's extremely rare, even among fundamentalists, that religious (and even non-religious) people follow their core beliefs to their logical conclusion.
With respect to the belief that hormonal birth control is infanticide, it is a fringe belief. Zogby's, Pew, Gallup, everyone who examines the issue comes to the same conclusion. Very few people think birth control that prevents fertilized eggs from implanting is immoral.
As for what your doctor would tell you regarding a surgical procedure, again, they would not tell you everything. They would not go into detail regarding the anesthesia they intended to use without some belief that it would cause an allergic reaction or other adverse reaction. They wouldn't identify your scrub nurses and other personnel unless they knew you were a hasidic jew and had a religious taboo against being seen unclothed or touched by a man. They wouldn't discuss issues related to transfusions unless they knew you were a Jhvh's Witness and religiously opposed to blood transfusions. It's slightly more likely that they'd discuss end-of-life issues if they knew you were Catholic and accepted the Pope's teaching on not terminating life support. But it's still not probable.
In reality, medical personnel only discuss the relevant or most likely issues to come up, and don't discuss all issues.
It's also perfectly reasonable for a doctor to presume a patient asking for birth control isn't concerned about the moral implications. Otherwise they'd ask a spiritual advisor for advice and not a doctor.
As for my agenda? My parents make their living in the medical profession. I want to keep them employed. Requiring what you're asking medical providers to do will bury both patients and providers in paperwork and drive most doctors out of the business.
Did the polls you mention explain the science? Did the people taking the poll understand it? There is a growing group of people that believe that hormonal birth control is wrong, because a growing amount of people are learning what really happens.
There is a big difference to informing people about one more issue and miring a doctor in paperwork. Can you honestly think of another issue that people see as a life or death issue but are not informed about? I do not see how this would drive most doctors out of business. The doctor also did not discuss any alternatives at all despite my request for more information. She did not find out why I requested an alternative. As wjschudy mentioned, my interest in alternate forms of birth control probably should have tipped her off that I had some concerns.
This allegation that people would be buried in paperwork and doctors be driven out of business does not seem honest. At best it is hyperbole. At worst you are trying to obscure the issue--that doctors and medical associations are at best unconcerned with things that matter deeply to some people. At worst, a medical association conspired to obfuscate an issue which matters deeply to some people by changing a medical definition so that they could classify a drug where they wanted to.
This kind of shows where you stand--you may be pro-choice, but not pro-informed-choice.
Tom stated to that the polls dealt with whether potentially decreasing the likelihood of implantation of a fertilized egg was immoral. I thought that was the science that you were speaking of.
As for your doctor, if you're uncomfortable with him/her, you should definitely seek a different one.
Can you honestly think of another issue that people see as a life or death issue but are not informed about?
Yes I can. Doctors almost never discuss issues related to life support should a complication arise during the surgery. The practice in every major hospital in this country is to ignore the issue until it comes up, put the patient on life support, and deal with the moral issues after disaster arises. Patients are completely on their own and completely uninformed as to what the procedure would entail.
And as for obscuring the issue, you can't contemplate every moral or other sort of personal objection a person could have in advance. It's simply not humanly possible. Patient One may not want a particular device used on them because they had a bad experience with the manufacturer before and think the risk is too high. Patient Two may be a Jehovah's Witness and not want blood transfusions (based on a scriptural prohibition). Patient Three might be a female Hasidic Jew and not want male attending nurses or residents. Patient Four might be Catholic and might not want the doctors to revive him if certain complications because the Church decreed that pulling brain dead people off life support is murder. To go through every remotely possible contingency would lengthen consultations needlessly and make the consent forms you sign when undergoing medical treatment into novel-length agreements. The time that this would consume that could be used to treat other patients will cut into what a doctor can do in a given day, and that's going to affect their bottom line.
It just doesn't make sense to put this burden on the doctor when patients can educate themselves just as easily. The patient is in a far better position to make these sorts of moral judgments and ask specific questions relevant to their beliefs rather than making the doctor go through a checklist of every cultural and moral taboo on record.
Notice that, in the issue you give, doctors choose on the side of life without knowing the patients' feelings. The issue here is that the drug is labelled as a particular thing which means something different than most patients think it would mean. The patient, in general, does not realize that they may have a moral objection because of this. How, then, are patients supposed to become aware that a possible moral objection exests?
As for paperwork, patients fill that out in the lobby beforehand. It's already novel-length. The last time I went to a doctor, there were questions on whether I had moral objections to some of the procedures they commonly did. Guess what? It took up one line. I did not feel like that question was equivalent to being buried under paperwork. Granted, I was buried under paperwork, but most of that was medical history. I'm not really happy anyway with doctors who are so concerned with the bottom line that they try to prescribe antibiotics and rush you out the door in two minutes. I'm not happy with doctors who try to prescribe drugs or procedures without explanations. Yet somehow, this has become standard in medical care. What happened to doctors caring about their patients? I can explain what the drug in question does in less than a minute. Why couldn't a pharmacist or doctor have done so? Or at least offered to do so?
Doctors are certainly not reluctant to let people know that if they take antibiotics while on the pill, they may get pregnant. (Which, by the way, is also missing a step. Antibiotics have never gotten anyone pregnant in and of themselves...) If I were to have an appendectomy or colonoscopy, the doctor would tell me clearly what the procedure would entail. I think that moral objections to birth control would be very common if more people knew just how it worked.
You are overgeneralizing when you speak of information overload. Patients are routinely told about side effects that have a very small chance of happening. Also, seeing as this is essentially a moral issue, you cannot argue it "moral issues aside."
What's your real agenda, pezzonovante?
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With respect to the belief that hormonal birth control is infanticide, it is a fringe belief. Zogby's, Pew, Gallup, everyone who examines the issue comes to the same conclusion. Very few people think birth control that prevents fertilized eggs from implanting is immoral.
As for what your doctor would tell you regarding a surgical procedure, again, they would not tell you everything. They would not go into detail regarding the anesthesia they intended to use without some belief that it would cause an allergic reaction or other adverse reaction. They wouldn't identify your scrub nurses and other personnel unless they knew you were a hasidic jew and had a religious taboo against being seen unclothed or touched by a man. They wouldn't discuss issues related to transfusions unless they knew you were a Jhvh's Witness and religiously opposed to blood transfusions. It's slightly more likely that they'd discuss end-of-life issues if they knew you were Catholic and accepted the Pope's teaching on not terminating life support. But it's still not probable.
In reality, medical personnel only discuss the relevant or most likely issues to come up, and don't discuss all issues.
It's also perfectly reasonable for a doctor to presume a patient asking for birth control isn't concerned about the moral implications. Otherwise they'd ask a spiritual advisor for advice and not a doctor.
As for my agenda? My parents make their living in the medical profession. I want to keep them employed. Requiring what you're asking medical providers to do will bury both patients and providers in paperwork and drive most doctors out of the business.
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There is a big difference to informing people about one more issue and miring a doctor in paperwork. Can you honestly think of another issue that people see as a life or death issue but are not informed about? I do not see how this would drive most doctors out of business. The doctor also did not discuss any alternatives at all despite my request for more information. She did not find out why I requested an alternative. As wjschudy mentioned, my interest in alternate forms of birth control probably should have tipped her off that I had some concerns.
This allegation that people would be buried in paperwork and doctors be driven out of business does not seem honest. At best it is hyperbole. At worst you are trying to obscure the issue--that doctors and medical associations are at best unconcerned with things that matter deeply to some people. At worst, a medical association conspired to obfuscate an issue which matters deeply to some people by changing a medical definition so that they could classify a drug where they wanted to.
This kind of shows where you stand--you may be pro-choice, but not pro-informed-choice.
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As for your doctor, if you're uncomfortable with him/her, you should definitely seek a different one.
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But the fact remains that this is standard in medical care.
The word "potentially" is a lot different from "definitely."
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Yes I can. Doctors almost never discuss issues related to life support should a complication arise during the surgery. The practice in every major hospital in this country is to ignore the issue until it comes up, put the patient on life support, and deal with the moral issues after disaster arises. Patients are completely on their own and completely uninformed as to what the procedure would entail.
And as for obscuring the issue, you can't contemplate every moral or other sort of personal objection a person could have in advance. It's simply not humanly possible. Patient One may not want a particular device used on them because they had a bad experience with the manufacturer before and think the risk is too high. Patient Two may be a Jehovah's Witness and not want blood transfusions (based on a scriptural prohibition). Patient Three might be a female Hasidic Jew and not want male attending nurses or residents. Patient Four might be Catholic and might not want the doctors to revive him if certain complications because the Church decreed that pulling brain dead people off life support is murder. To go through every remotely possible contingency would lengthen consultations needlessly and make the consent forms you sign when undergoing medical treatment into novel-length agreements. The time that this would consume that could be used to treat other patients will cut into what a doctor can do in a given day, and that's going to affect their bottom line.
It just doesn't make sense to put this burden on the doctor when patients can educate themselves just as easily. The patient is in a far better position to make these sorts of moral judgments and ask specific questions relevant to their beliefs rather than making the doctor go through a checklist of every cultural and moral taboo on record.
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As for paperwork, patients fill that out in the lobby beforehand. It's already novel-length. The last time I went to a doctor, there were questions on whether I had moral objections to some of the procedures they commonly did. Guess what? It took up one line. I did not feel like that question was equivalent to being buried under paperwork. Granted, I was buried under paperwork, but most of that was medical history. I'm not really happy anyway with doctors who are so concerned with the bottom line that they try to prescribe antibiotics and rush you out the door in two minutes. I'm not happy with doctors who try to prescribe drugs or procedures without explanations. Yet somehow, this has become standard in medical care. What happened to doctors caring about their patients? I can explain what the drug in question does in less than a minute. Why couldn't a pharmacist or doctor have done so? Or at least offered to do so?
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