BY MIKE MAGEE
Ought to anybody current know of any purpose that this couple shouldn’t be joined in holy matrimony, converse now or eternally maintain your peace.” E book of Frequent Prayer, Church of England, 1549
Final night Trump rose from the ashes and declared it was time to “Make America Nice and Superb Once more” (MAGAGA).
This previous week, 5 days after the Midterm elections, AMA President, Jack Resnick, Jr., MD, raised his voice from the rostrum on the AMA Interim Assembly in Hawaii with the AMA’s personal model of a name to motion:
“However make no mistake, when politicians insert themselves in our examination rooms to intrude with the patient-physician relationship, once they politicize deeply private well being selections, or criminalize evidence-based care, we won’t again down…I by no means imagined colleagues would discover themselves monitoring down hospital attorneys earlier than performing pressing abortions, when minutes depend … asking if a 30% likelihood of maternal demise, or impending renal failure, meet the standards for the state’s exemptions … or whether or not they should wait some time longer, till their pregnant affected person will get even sicker…Sufficient is sufficient. We can’t permit physicians or our sufferers to turn into pawns in these lies.”
Over a yr in the past, they’d signaled consciousness that assaults on Roe v. Wade may basically problem affected person autonomy and the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship. On September 21, 2021, the AMA with 25 different medical organizations filed an amicus transient in opposition to the restrictive Mississippi abortion regulation, Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group. And on October 12, 2021, 19 medical societies, with the AMA within the lead, filed an amicus transient in U.S. v. Texas, the abortion vigilante regulation signed by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Over the previous yr, the AMA had ample warning that the state of affairs was spinning uncontrolled. On June 27, 2022, I wrote: “My concern right now, regardless of the robust messaging from Chicago, is that the AMA and its membership haven’t totally absorbed that this can be a ‘mission-critical’ second within the group’s historical past… The robust phrases, with out actions to again them up will completely seal the AMA’s destiny, and problem Medication’s standing as a ‘occupation.’”
I used to be reacting to the AMA’s assertion three days earlier, on launch of the Dobbs resolution, which labeled the choice “an egregious allowance of presidency intrusion into the medical examination room, a direct assault on the observe of medication and the patient-physician relationship…the AMA condemns the excessive courtroom’s interpretation on this case. We are going to at all times have physicians’ backs and defend the observe of medication, we’ll combat to guard the patient-physician relationship.”
On the time, I beneficial that the AMA mobilize and orchestrate their Federation state and specialty societies to pursue acts of “doctor ‘civil disobedience’ the place applicable to guard the well being and properly being of all girls, no matter age, race, sexual id, faith, or financial standing.”
This warning got here six months after I highlighted Charles Dickens phrases in a “Story of Two Cities” – “It was the very best of occasions, it was the worst of occasions, it was the age of knowledge, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of perception, it was the epoch of incredulity, …” – as a approach to dramatize that we too are a “story of two cities” as this map of america, shade coded for regressive laws and ways to disenfranchise girls and kids, folks of shade, the poor and the weak, properly illustrates.
On November 8, 2022, the AMA web site posted a bit titled “Advocacy in motion: Defending reproductive well being.” However a constructive critic can be justified in suggesting that the plan is tall on “advocacy”, however quick on “motion.”
What does “motion” appear to be? In Half 2 of this piece, I’ll present examples from Michigan, Kansas, Kentucky, and Washington.
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Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and writer of “CODE BLUE: Contained in the Medical Industrial Complicated.”