Why Do You Vote? Dignity of Women
Respect for women is a multi-faceted topic, so there’s a lot to cover here. If you don’t have time to read all parts of this blog post, please scroll down to read the last section and look at the illustration from myanetwork.org. Once again I am sharing posts from retired physician Dr. Karen Ilika. Other than this introduction, all the text, other than headings, is from Dr. Ilika, who has posted her writing on Facebook at http://facebook.com/karen.ilika. I have posted only a few selections of what she has written.
Why I vote by Dr. Karen Ilika
in response to the Presidential debate
50 days to the General Election
DJT regarding Roe vs Wade: “Look, this is an issue that's torn our country apart for 52 years. Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote. And that's what happened. ... But each individual state is voting. It's the vote of the people now. It's not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it.”
DJT brags about being responsible for overturning Roe vs Wade which was established law for over 50 years and guaranteed certain protections for women’s reproductive healthcare. It is simply not true that the majority of people wanted it overturned and left to the states. When reproductive rights initiatives have been on the ballot in the past year, all 6 states – California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont, and Ohio – have voted favoring access to abortion. But 15 states have early abortion bans on the books that cannot be changed by citizen sponsored initiatives.
The patchwork of laws that have resulted so far have created very unsafe conditions for pregnant women in many parts of the country. The Louisiana state legislature passed a law, that takes effect October 1, to reclassify a drug commonly kept on emergency carts in delivery rooms as a “dangerous substance” because it is also used, with prescription, for early medical abortions. I can tell you from personal experience that when faced with a hemorrhaging patient after a delivery you want the appropriate drugs to stop it right at hand. As now reclassified it must be kept in locked storage under the control of a pharmacist along with the actual dangerous drugs like opioids and benzos.
If a state establishes fertilization as the onset of life, several birth control options will not be available. This makes the likelihood of unintended pregnancy much higher. In addition, IVF (an infertility treatment that produces about 2% of live born babies) involves fertilization of eggs outside of the body. This would be illegal and prevent couples with fertility problems from accessing the technology that could help them become parents.
When asked directly if he would sign an abortion ban as President if Congress passed it, he refused to answer. We all know what that means. When reminded that JD Vance said that was the plan at a campaign rally, DJT unconvincingly stated he has not discussed this topic with his VP pick and campaign surrogate.
Leaving the specifics of restrictions on women’s bodily autonomy up to individual states is a bad idea. As someone who was in college before Roe v Wade was instituted, I remember when women in desperate circumstances were forced to seek out illegal abortions or attempt self-induced termination of their pregnancies. I knew a couple of students who suffered harm during this time. Restricting abortion only makes safe and legal abortion unavailable. Early abortions will still be done and women will suffer the harm.
I vote to put the decision making power for reproductive health care in the hands of the women who are impacted as a federally established human right.
Why I vote by Dr. Karen Ilika
to save women’s lives
44 days to the General Election
Roe v Wade became law in 1973 when the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 that the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment protects a woman’s right to privacy and ensures her right to choose to have an abortion. It further stated that the government must balance this with a legitimate interest in protecting a woman’s health and prenatal life.
This ruling gave women access to safe termination of pregnancy. Unsafe abortions, provided by inadequately trained individuals or self-induced, often resulted in complications leading to overwhelming infection and in some cases death. The New England Journal of Medicine published a 2019 interview with Dr. Michael Baden about his experience as a medical examiner in New York City in the 1960’s pre-Roe v Wade. He personally saw about 20 deaths each year from botched abortions. In addition, for every death he estimated 100 women were hospitalized for severe complications which resulted in permanent damage to the reproductive system and other organs. After the passage of Roe v Wade, Dr. Baden says the deaths from abortion dropped to near zero in NYC.
All things being equal, being pregnant increases a woman’s risk of death over that of a non- pregnant woman. “Maternal mortality rate” is the number mother’s deaths out of 100,00 live births. Currently the maternal mortality rate (MMR) in the US is 26 deaths per 100,000 births. During the 2020-2021 Covid epidemic the rate increased by 40% as having Covid while pregnant had deadly consequences. The United States is the most dangerous wealthy country in which to be pregnant in the world! In contrast, the mortality rate for women with access to safe, legal abortion is 0.7 deaths per 100,000.
Anyone who has seen the movie “Steel Magnolia” will recall Shelby’s decision to risk a pregnancy despite diabetes so as not to deprive her husband of having a child. **Spoiler alert ** She develops kidney failure, undergoes dialysis, receives a transplant, is on immune suppressing drugs, and so can’t fight off the infection, which results in her death before her baby is a year old. Yes, it was her decision to become pregnant in spite of her high risk status, but I would argue that every woman should have the freedom to make that decision for herself and if contraception fails to avail herself of a termination without government interference.
Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022 by the Supreme Court thanks to the 3 justices appointed by DJT expressly for this purpose. Each of these judges swore during their confirmation hearings that they believed that Roe v Wade was established law. And yet, here we are.
The recent reporting on the case of Amber Thurman is a heartbreaking example of how the overturning of Roe v Wade increases the risk of death for women of childbearing age. Amber’s death occurred in August 2022, 2 weeks after the restrictive Georgia abortion law took effect. She had taken medication to cause an abortion, but not all of the tissue came out of her uterus. (This can also happen during a spontaneous miscarriage.) As a result she had pain and bleeding and went to the emergency room for care. At the hospital she was denied a D&C long enough to develop an infection that overwhelmed her body and vital organs. Her 6 year old son was left motherless.
Doctors had started IV antibiotics and put her in the ICU, but reportedly delayed the standard of care surgery to empty the uterus, because they were afraid of stiff legal penalties for performing a D&C under the new law. This was a preventable maternal death and Amber is not the only patient to be denied care until there is absolute evidence that she is on the brink of death. Sometimes that care is too late. You know, that exception “for the life of the mother” is just too vaguely defined by the Gynoticians (politicians who believe they are more qualified than a woman and her doctors to make a woman’s healthcare decisions).
It wasn’t very many years ago that DJT said in a televised town hall that there would have to be “some kind of punishment” for women who have abortions. He later walked that back insisting instead that doctors should be punished. And so we now have laws that criminalize standard practice and doctors are fearful.
I vote to allow patients and their doctors the freedom to choose the best possible medical care without threat of legal prosecution.
Why I vote by Dr. Karen Ilika
to preserve the Dignity of women
43 days to the General Election
The right to have control over one’s body SHOULD be a no-brainer. Women’s rights should be human rights. Abortion bans amount to gender discrimination, I can’t come up with a single law that takes away the rights of a man to make decisions about his own body (at least since the end of slavery). Even the military draft gave men a choice between service, status of conscientious objector, going to jail, or leaving the country.
Decisions about whether to have sex, to use contraception, to carry a pregnancy or not, or to leave an abusive relationship are fundamental to a woman’s dignity. Furthermore most victims of human trafficking are women, often under the effects of drugs or threats of violence. By taking away choice in these matters, women are treated as second class citizens.
I believe in the sanctity of life and support a woman’s right to make decisions about her body and healthcare. It is not universally accepted that “life begins at conception”. Islam, for example, teaches that the soul enters the body 120 days after conception. The government has no authority to impose the religious beliefs of those in power on the people of our country.
A fertilized egg is certainly a potential life from a science perspective. But the question of when one becomes a human being is more philosophical than scientific. If we use brain wave activity that is commonly used to assess whether living or dead at the end of life, perhaps that could inform our decision of when life begins. Human-specific brain waves begin to appear at around 25-26 weeks of pregnancy. That is also the time when a fetus is capable of living outside the mother’s body with modern medical support.
I’m not advocating any particular timeline. There are potential exceptions at every point in time due to obstetrical events.
WHY I VOTE BY DR. KAREN ILIKA
TO block a dangerous man
40 days to the General Election
I vote to keep DJT from having any influence on the lives of American women.
DJT has based his entire campaign on instilling fear about how bad things are in America - saying the country is “going to hell”, “our country is being destroyed”, our economy is in a “dangerous position” and very close to a great depression, the country is “very, very, sick”, the stock market is crashing, millions of migrants have been allowed in from “prisons, from jails, from mental institutions, even insane asylums,” and “now we have the worst border in the history of the world,” even suggesting World War 3 is imminent. He sets the scene where he, and only he, can swoop in and save everyone. His hyperbole both about how bad things are, always saying that it’s the absolute worst ever in history, and how outstanding his own achievements have been is not just tiresome, it allows him to hide the lack of facts behind distorted language.
This week a desperate DJT facing polls where he is behind with the female vote proclaimed his view of the nightmarish predicament women in America are facing. In his own words, at recent rallies.... “the great women of our country” are “more stressed and depressed and unhappy ... and are less optimistic and confident in the future than they were 4 years ago.” He is here to save them.
“I believe I will fix all of that and fast and at long last, this ... national nightmare will end. It will end. We gotta end this national nightmare because I am your protector. I wanna be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector. You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector.”
Apparently some women in the MAGA universe find some comfort in having the assurance that DJT would be in charge and make them safe, happy and confident. But as a friend recently said, “I will never want to be “protected” by a sexual predator.”
His predatory behavior first came to national attention in 2015 when a ten year old tape from Access Hollywood revealed him using vulgar language describing how his celebrity gave him license to do anything he wanted to women. His womanizing led to divorces from his first two wives.
In 2023 DJT was found liable for sexual abuse by a bipartisan jury after accosting E. Jean Carroll many years earlier and then claiming that he didn’t know her, had never met her and declaring she was not his “type”. He was found guilty of defamation a second time after he made other comments following the first trial denouncing Ms. Carroll as a “whack job”.
“You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead. You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to push back hard. You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you. Never admit.” As told to Bob Howard and reported in his book ‘Fear: Trump in the White House’.
He has bragged to Howard Stern about being a voyeur under the guise of inspecting conditions when he was the owner of the Miss USA pageant. "Well, I'll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone's getting dressed, and ready and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it. You know, I'm inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good. You know they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that.”
DJT is a creepy, misogynistic, convicted sexual predator who cannot be trusted to protect women. I vote to keep him out of a position of power over women.
WHY I VOTE BY DR. KAREN ILIKA
Women’s Healthcare
30 days to the General Election
I vote for women’s access to healthcare.
After 50 years of doing my best to educate my patients, doing some health education programs for local schools and civic groups, and being the “go to” person for medical support for family, friends and neighbors, I automatically try to correct and clarify misinformation when I encounter it. I recently had an interaction with an anti-choice proponent who described the process of abortion in the mid-first trimester in graphic terms. Visions of “ripping arms and legs” from the body, and an embryo trying to escape the violence of the procedure. I wondered if she had seen the film “The Silent Scream” which was an anti-choice propaganda production released about the time I completed medical school in the early 80’s.
Since I was trained in the military, and military programs are prohibited from doing procedures for pregnancy termination, I was not taught how to perform a surgical abortion. However the procedure of a D&C is identical whether there is a viable embryo or not, as in the instance of an incomplete miscarriage where tissue remains in the uterus causing continued pain and bleeding. Also, since miscarriage is a natural event that occurs in up to 1 out of every 5 pregnancies, I had plenty of experience with patients experiencing early pregnancy loss. Women would often bring into the office a bit of bloody tissue wanting an explanation about what had happened and why.
With 10 states having abortion-related constitutional amendments on the ballot this fall, there are a lot of people who struggle with understanding exactly what an abortion entails. So for those who might be interested and for the gynoticians (politicians who feel more qualified than women and their doctors to make women’s healthcare decisions) who imagine a fully formed very tiny human being growing in the uterus from the time of conception I offer the following.
When undergoing IVF (in vitro fertilization) the egg has been fertilized by sperm outside of the body, incubated for 4-5 days and is ready to be implanted into the uterus when it is the size of the dot at the end of this sentence. Because of the peculiar way that pregnancy is calculated (from the first day of the most recent period) fertilization takes place 2 weeks into the pregnancy term.
2 weeks after that is considered 4 weeks of gestation and a cell mass the size of a poppy seed is burrowing into the lining of the uterus. By 6 weeks many women realize that they pregnant and a tiny sac has formed with an embryo the size of a pea. This is a very common time for a miscarriage to occur. It’s also when many medication induced abortions or surgical abortions are completed.
The photograph below shows tissue from pregnancies at 5-6-7-8 and 9 weeks (smallest to largest). Growth is very rapid at this stage. Prior to processing the specimens would have been bloody, indistinguishable from a blood clot. You can see some of the fluffy tissue from where the sac attaches to the uterine lining and the outline of a sac-like formation (the gestational sac) in some of the specimens. Inside each sac is a mass of cells referred to as an embryo at this stage of development. There is a ruler for size reference.
Care for early pregnancy loss and pregnancy termination is medical care that should be available to every woman. I vote for women to have unrestricted access to health care.
Illustration from myanetwork.org