Anatomy and Art

Yesterday was the 4th of July, and I have to say that I found myself having a hard time getting into any kind of patriotic spirit for the holiday.  I am living in Austin, Texas again these days and those of you who watch a lot of news probably already know that this city has become a major battle ground for women’s healthcare, and specifically abortion procedures.

About a week and a half ago, Senator Wendy Davis filibustered for about 11 hours to keep a bill from being pushed through that would change the standards for any clinic offering abortions such that we are likely to see 42 clinics close out of the 47 we have practicing today.  That would leave Texas with only 5 such clinics left in operation.  She was stopped short of her 13 hour goal by three strikes.  One of which was that she received aide, when someone helped her put on a back brace.  Technically this is against the rules.  But the other two were for being off topic or “not germane” as it was stated in court.  The first time she was said to be off topic, it was for mentioning Planned Parenthood.  And the last time it was for mentioning the sonogram law, both pretty well on-topic sounding to just about anyone without a strong reason to pretend like they were not.  I watched the proceedings from a live feed online.  It was my first day back in Texas after about a week out of town, and I’ve never been so obsessed watching people call point of inquiries and such.  It was by far the tensest display of parliamentary procedure I have ever encountered.  When her filibuster was prematurely ended, people got up to ask questions and delay the proceedings that last hour, and when their questions were no longer addressed thousands of Wendy Davis supporters made so much noise (a move that many have called a people’s filibuster) that a vote could not be taken by midnight, and the legislation was not pushed through.

They did try though.  A vote was taken, all be it after midnight.  And the very same people who tried to argue that discussion of the sonogram law was a final strike of being off topic and ended the filibuster prematurely then decided that it would be okay to change time records to show that they had succeeded in getting the vote in on time.   With so much of the world watching, they were caught and it is only because so much of the world was watching that they were not able to cheat this bill through like that.

Hours later, Governor Rick Perry called a second special session to bring this bill back up again.  They met for the first day on Monday, and thousands of the bill’s opponents dressed in orange and went to the capitol to make their presence known. I was there with a co-worker on our lunch break, and the scene was impressive.  Photographer Bob Daemmrich got this photo from the forth floor that afternoon.   

The senate adjourned fairly quickly, but a message was sent, and if nothing else I managed to re-register to vote so that I will be ready for the next election.

That evening there were protesters with signs at the Capitol on both sides.

The next day it was the House meeting.  And this time there was a sea of blue t-shirts showing in force as well as those in orange t-shirts.  The meeting was scheduled from 3:30 to midnight, and they were taking registration of support or opposition from anyone who stopped in with the opportunity to sign up to testify in the court.  Again, I stopped by on my lunch break  I wanted to beat the lines that would inevitably come and go on record as being opposed to this bill.  The scene felt eerily like some kind of sports event with everyone all color coded and chanting and cheering for their side with sloganed signs and t-shirts.  Only to the winner goes the right to basic healthcare and autonomy, or something like that.  It was weird.  I registered on an iPad that I was against the bill but did not ask to testify since I wouldn’t be back until the end of the work day.

Keeping the sports metaphor in mind, there seemed to be a sort of pep-rally going on out in the rotunda, or maybe it was more like a revival.  There was a large camera and a sea of blue t-shirts sometimes chanting, and sometimes singing “Amazing Grace” and always someone with a microphone in the middle but I guess they were projected into the camera, not outward where we could hear anything.

I want to be clear that these guys were already set up and filming since before I got there a little after noon (and it didn’t look they’d only just arrived).  Many more were inside and already in line to get into the 3:30 meeting.

When I came back later after work, the crowd had gotten much thicker.  In particular, a lot more opponents to the bill had made it out.  Again that sports feeling that is just strange when one is talking about legislation and access to healthcare.  The rotunda was still all blue in the center, but now orange around the sides.  When I took this, the blue shirts were singing “Amazing Grace” again while the orange shirts chanted “Healthcare is a human right, not just for the rich and white.”

Different chants would go in and out throughout the day and into the night.  And there was always a line to get into the meeting room itself.  I never made it in there myself, but I did watch some of the testimony from the overflow rooms.  I think I heard that there were twelve rooms like these, set up with live video from the meeting itself.  I saw a doctor testify, and was frustrated to see him questioned in ways that so evidently displayed a lack of understanding of medical science.  There was a pastor called.  And some expert on hospitals and how they run and whether this bill might even block all abortion services in Texas on technicality especially if doctors are having to ask permission to work in religiously affiliated hospitals.  And then came the more personal testimonies.  And some of these were more principled.  But many of these were women getting up to speak about the worst day of their life.  Many spoke of instances of rape and how long it took them to even be able to admit to what had happened to them.  Many spoke about being pushed into getting an abortion when they didn’t want one, or having medical complications from their procedures.  The team mentality in watching these testimonies from the overflow rooms was a little disturbing too.  I am vehemently pro-choice, but I do not doubt that people have had some horrible experiences with abortions that either didn’t go well medically or were not what the patient really wanted.  One of the reasons I became so interested in patient education is because of how easy it is for people to get pushed into procedures without fully understanding them or when it doesn’t actually serve their needs.  I believe whole-heartedly that patients need to be able to get as much information as they want to make informed decisions about their health in any even remotely elective procedure.  This is a problem with healthcare at large though, not just in cases of abortion.

In the end, I wound up sticking out the whole night.  In so doing I spoke with a lot of people.  Some of them had personal stories to tell as to why they were there.  I spoke with an 18 yr old pro-lifer with a laptop who was actually very sweet, and like most healthy teenage boys, didn’t seem to know much at all about how reproduction works and the kinds of risks that pregnancy and delivery carries.  People keep emphasizing how risky an abortion can be, and especially late-term abortions (which is also a part of this bill).  Yet one of the doctors who testified was very clear when he made the point that it is still less dangerous than childbirth.  That 18 yr old kid looked up how many deaths in childbirth there were last year through the CDC and found something like 700 or 750 women died just last year giving birth in the United States.

I also spoke to a middle aged woman to whom I can not attribute such innocence.  She spoke to me with a smile and asked me my views.  I told her that I was vehemently pro-choice, to which I received that old Southern smiling “Whhhyyy?” and was further lectured about how mis-informed I must be to believe all the news sources that have brought up how many clinics this bill will close.  She also went on to argue that health care standards should always be raised and told me how she only had protecting women at heart.  For a while I even believed her good intentions.  But she eventually told me that she had been a part of pushing through the sonogram law that forces women seeking an abortion to have a sonogram, regardless of a doctor’s recommendation.    I was a little bit stunned at the time, that someone who had claimed to be in favor of better medical standards would also be bragging to me about legislating an unnecessary, invasive, and often emotionally tortuous procedure to all those women she claimed to want to protect.  It was a goal of mine that night to remain civil when talking to people who disagreed with me, but I can’t help but shudder at the thought of this woman today and that I shook her hand that night.

The other pro-lifer (well, the term pro-life always feels disingenuous when talking about someone like this) that I spoke to has actually made a couple of news articles since that night.  Her t-shirt had a gun on it, and did kind of double take trying to figure out what that was about when I first saw it. Here she is showing the shirt off to someone else who by the look of the photo (taken by Guillermo Hernandez Martinez) was equally unimpressed.  This woman came looking for a fight and was happy to engage with anyone who so much as stopped to read what she was wearing.

What gets me now though, is that I found this photo in an article on Thursday night that was titled “Texas abortion battle heats up as activists ‘Hail Satan!”  Now, not only is this something that I never encountered in the entire time that I was there that night.  But the supposedly scandalous video floating around to confirm it is literally a college aged woman in a moment of frustration, and the whole scene lasted about 3 seconds.  3 seconds, in over 12 hours of non-stop footage of the entire event from the middle of the rotunda and this is what makes the headlines.  I first found out that this had made the headlines when an old friend who now lives in Germany asked me about it.  And the other night I found two more articles with similar titles.  And I have to admit, I’m pissed off.  I’m pissed off enough that I felt the need to write this entire post documenting my experiences throughout the night.

The meeting ended that night, with the House cutting off testimony after midnight as planned.  At that time there were over 1000 still waiting to testify out in the halls though.  And at that time, despite specifically stating, when asked at the beginning of the meeting, that there would not be a vote, they voted.  This vote was especially objected against by Representative Sylvester Turner, who had amendments to the bill and had been the one to ask at the beginning whether or not there would be a vote that night.

None of this process feels right.  Our own legislators can’t follow law themselves even in the law making process.  Conservative radio calls us a vocal minority and has accused the bill’s opposition of busing in protestors from out of state.  Then the other night church buses from Arizona were spotted as pro-life protesters showed up in their own droves.  Thousands of people have shown up repeatedly in opposition to this bill, and will do so again next week.  And after spending a long night in this scene, and going to work tired the next day I’m asked from Germany about whether the rumors of people chanting “Hail Satan” are overblown.  Yes, yes they are overblown.  And even if they weren’t, any secular news source should be able to tell the story from more than just that viewpoint.  I have seen no headlines pointing to the continuous religious display being put on in honor of legislating healthcare.  Scripture is not medically valid.  And we already have medical standards in this country.  They’re called “medical standards.”  We don’t pick and choose which procedures are more popular or controversial when we decide how best to handle them medically.  Or actually, we do now.  As it turns out, I am very much back in Texas again, and a large part of the population has no problem taking scripture as science, just so long as you pick out the same parts they do.

I care about this country, and I care about this state.  But this fight is ridiculous.  And the way it is being fought is even more ridiculous.  And the further I delve into Texas politics, the more ridiculous and disconnected I find it all to be.  These issues are divisive.  They are divisive in ways that I can’t help but feel affected by personally.  Personal autonomy, and individual liberty are some really basic ideals that we have here.  Telling half the population that their body is only their own so long as their will to live and healthcare decisions don’t affect anyone else is not okay.  Telling women that they should just keep their legs closed if they don’t want to get pregnant in a society that warns women, sometimes daily, about the likelihood of rape is not okay.  Treating pregnancy like a punishment for promiscuity is not okay.  Forcing a woman to carry a child against her will, whatever her reasons may be, is not okay.  Legislating medical care based on religious ideology is not okay.  And legislating medical procedures without any concept of how they work, or the anatomical systems involved, is not okay.

I think that this is the most political post I have ever written here.  This issue matters to me.  It matters because my life and my body is my own, and when people legislate against my ability to make personal healthcare decisions for myself, they deny my autonomy.  When the potential for new life is legislated to be more important than my life that is here now, it speaks volumes as to what we think of women.  And I am disheartened by so much fervor put forth to stop women from being able to make one of the most important decisions that they can make.  And I am horrified at the utter disregard of basic medical science and anatomy that comes out of so many of the people pushing this legislation forward.  Medical standards need to come from the medical community.  They need to come from people who understand the rules they’re making.  For the same reasons that patients need access to information when they are making their own medical decisions, people making decisions for the rest of us via legislation damn well better know what they’re talking about.

I recently stumbled across this really nice interactive chart put up by the Washington Post. It compares the costs of medical care across The United States, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, India, Chile, Canada, and Argentina.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/high-cost-of-medical-procedures-in-the-us/

This is a huge problem in our country, and our costs just seem to keep elevating.  I personally believe that this has a lot to do with our insurance system getting in the way and getting their cut directly from both the patients and also the practitioners and hospitals offering service.  Everyone has to be insured, and insurance claims often have to be argued, sometimes in the courts.  As someone who has spent a lot of years being uninsured, I can tell you that you find some clinics that will charge you less for not having to go through the hassle of getting paid from an insurance company, and others that will charge you double to try and make up for all the underpaid bills that are left when insurance companies pay under cost for services.  It’s a troubled system at best.  That being said, I just made my first medical appointment with a major medical insurance card tonight, and it’s a relief to have it.  I can see why those who do feel covered are afraid to give that up.  So, I’m not sure where we as a nation go from here.  But hey, Wilson Andrews has put together a really nice informative chart that at least lets us begin to see what we are paying from a relative standpoint.