Tuesday, February 23, 2010

equality through access to safe abortion

I am proud to establish this blog as a place to note my reactions to the complex social network surrounding health in contemporary America. It is clearly not only medical phenomena which dictate health, yet it is the providers who hold sway over many of the interactions which promote health and cure disease. We, physicians of America, somehow have been anointed with such great power over people at times in dire straights, for whom most of us want nothing but the best for and often have no way of helping other than connecting with them as a human being. We evaluate and analyze and diagnosis with decades of education and centuries of evidence behind us, yet Americans and its health system fail its citizens daily.

It should be so simple, as it is taught to us in medical school (for only $200,000 and a decent GPA at a middle of the road undergraduate program can get you an MD or DO) to treat patients and eliminate health disparities. If only every problem had a medical or surgical one word, one procedure, one approach answer. I may have found a 'pathology' that does have this though...

Pregnancy is both a blessing and curse. At times all you have ever wanted, and the rest of the time its a giant pain in the ass to everyone involved. And we (doctors? Americans?) have perfected an incredible tool to eliminate health disparities and control overpopulation... ABORTION!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a wonderful world we have now created that a simple intervention has been seamlessly integrated into quiet neighborhood clinics and family doctors' offices. Well, this is happening in my NYC clinic and I can see this paradigm across the country in a manner of years. Just another visit to your primary care physician, then back to your old life again. Until America gives up her Puritanical and conservative naivety, undesired pregnancy will be a staple of the modern primary care provider's daily routine.

I am happy to step in to this role and feel great taking patients away from the over corporate feed lot styling of Planned Parenthood. They have done a world of service, and no doubt and will continue to draw the ire of enemies of reproductive freedom of choice allowing the rest of us to practice in peace.

I look forward to posting more observances and establishing more what I would like to think are radical viewpoints from which health care should be seen and reformed.