To the editor,
As a practicing physician I am dismayed at the assault on healthcare and privacy by a far-right religious minority intent on imposing its own narrow views.
This is largely from white, Christian, bigoted males with no medical training. They try to be more extreme than each other to win the next primary, with selfish disregard for human costs. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, the criminalization of evidence-based gender affirming care, and increasingly open anti-LGBTQ sentiment are disastrous steps backward.
Nothing should be more “sacred” than provider-patient privacy. This includes women making the best decisions for their own bodies, and parents providing the best care for their children. Nobody else should be allowed into that forum — certainly not non-medical zealots trying to impose theocracy.
Blanket prohibition of abortion will result in women dying, along with societal costs hitting mostly women of color and the poor. Politicians, not clinicians, will force high risk pregnancies to carry to term. Miscarriages (10-15 percent of all pregnancies) may lead to criminal investigations. Criminalization of gender-affirming care will kill young people. Medically accepted standard of care for transgender and non-binary youths, including hormonal treatment, lowers depression rates 60 percent, and reduces suicide by 73 percent.
Official GOP platforms with proclamations such as “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice” are directly contrary to decades-old findings from real psychiatric experts, and will encourage more anti-LGBTQ violence. And it won’t stop there. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas has made it clear that same-sex marriage and birth control could be threatened next.
I’ve been in medicine since the 1980s, and now we need to learn how to practice in the 1960s? Practitioners will be forced to struggle with the dilemma of deciding whether to practice evidence-based life-saving medicine vs. going to jail. This is a totally unnecessary and tragic double bind. Read the First Amendment and preserve the separation of church and state. While we’re at it, preserve the separation of church and medicine.
Theocratic fascism must be stopped.
— Dr. Tom Rafalski, Yachats
