Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The British Medical Association Weighs in WRT Abortion Rights in the US
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I think those are the only two possible reactions. YMMV. She said, in a sudden outburst of IAB (Internet Acronym Behavior). Crimenutely. (I’d use the Internet acronym for that, if I could, but as far as I know, there isn’t one. Yet.)
Somewhere, on today’s Daily Telegraph site, amidst the driveling over the Duke of Sussex’s “guttural” (as reported by his wife) reaction to the overturning of Roe v Wade, and the mourning over the death of Dame Deborah James–a lovely and real heroine in the fight against “bowel” (known in the US as “colon”) cancer–is a moronic “news briefing” suggesting that (this is the actual headline) “UK should offer American women free abortions, say doctors.”
Now, I don’t know how many of you know how much about the UK National Health Service. It’s supposed to be the jewel in the crown of British social policy. The world’s best socialized medicine. The Brits seem overawed by its magnificence in the way that populations love the sandy beaches and the picnics of their coastlines–that is, until they discover the marching ants, and the way that the sand tends to get into all their private creases, gets really itchy, and renders them completely miserable.
And so. What I know about the NHS, over decades as a British native struggling to find the means to assure her family’s health, and whilst listening to others in my family perfectly capable of doing the bit for themselves and still finding themselves adrift (parents, siblings, in-laws, friends–you name it–I’ve been there) is that the NHS is far from perfect.
A quick Google search makes the point. Patients drinking the stale water from their floral gifts because no-one on the staff brought them hydration alternatives. Patients waiting months, or years, for rather simple exams and tests that might have been life-saving, had they been delivered in time. Mothers desperate upon discovering that the remains of their stillborn babies were used as fuel for their hospital’s “heating plant.” (This was my mother’s own personal nightmare, in case anyone is interested.) Refusals of general practitioners (PCPs, for the American audience) to meet with sick patients in-person for fear of Covid concerns. I could go on and on in this sick-making way. But, I’m hoping, without further ado, that you get the idea. If not, please search on your own. You’ll thank me, I promise.
Still, today, it seems, the British Medical Association, which apparently finds itself with time on its hands, having excellently provided medical care for all British citizens over the past 2-1/2 years (sarcasm off), is concern-trolling American women who may not have access to enough abortion rights in states which aren’t minded to allow the procedure to excess:
But in an emergency debate on the issue on Wednesday, the BMA agreed doctors would lobby to “support the provision of free and safe abortion care to all nationals seeking this in the UK, without subjecting them to the overseas patient upfront tariff, regardless of borders”.
Glory be.
National Health Service, please take care of your own. You recently commissioned a report led by a veteran “Sir” of the Iraqi war campaign (Gordon Messenger) which turned out to be nothing more than a plea for more diversity, inclusion, and equity at NHS management levels, and which seemed to have little to do with what actuates and improves patient care for actual–you know–patients.
When you can demonstrate to me, and to members of my family in the UK who have been suffering under your inadequate interventions over the past years and decades that we should listen to you, then perhaps we’ll budge.
If ever there were a case for, “physician, heal thyself,” this might be it.
And, if you can’t get your head around that, perhaps you should “do the other thing” (h/t my mum).
Thank you for this eye-opener. In about 2002, I saw a Canadian woman on Good Morning America who had been diagnosed with cancer and told she could have surgery in 18 months (!). I think they hope you die before you can use up expensive treatments. She crossed the border into upstate New York and got surgery in two weeks.
Why are so many people hyped up about killing babies?
Whatever happened to “safe, legal, and rare?”
I remember reading at some point in the past that, at some places in Canada, the wait for pre-natal care was TEN months.
They sure do know how to cut costs!
A friend of mine died waiting for the next test that might have diagnosed her brain tumor.
Normally, I would say that’s the wrong symbol, but since this is socialized medicine, it’s the right one. That is a symbol of Hermes or Mercury, the psychopomp, who leads the dead to the underworld.
They never meant it. Same with so many other promises, such as Obama supposedly opposing same-sex marriage, plus of course “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” and so many others.
I remember reading some time ago that the two-serpents one was used at the entrances to houses of prostitution. But so much truth has gone down the memory hole since I was a kid.
Except for the slower response times, it sounds like Dr. Gosnell would have fit right into NHS system. Ugh.
Maybe the wait for an abortion in UK is also TEN months, wouldn’t that be something?
The last thing I remember hearing about the NHS was that they were having problems with the amount of time people were spending in the emergency waiting rooms, so the ambulances were stacking up outside the hospitals because the waiting time didn’t start until the patient had been delivered. I never did hear about a resolution though.
Sounds like typical bureaucracy. Like how China didn’t count covid deaths if someone didn’t make it to the hospital and get a positive test before dying.
At the Wall Street Journal on his “Best of the Web” column years ago, James Taranto had a section called “Great Moments in Socialized Medicine” about the NHS. I accumulated dozens of them, and published a huge post on my personal blog, around Obamacare time.
What are the incentives that drive the issue? It never works anywhere.
The idea that the NHS has taken such good care of its own that is in the sort of shape to enact the role of Lady Bountiful to the world’s sick, or even to offer free abortions to those in the United States with enough money to pay for a plane ticket (All Aboard the Abortion Express–Next Stop, The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust!) is simply ludicrous, bordering on the obscene.
Just my own family’s experience with the NHS has been harrowing:
My mother, who was clearly unable to cope on her own, lived for over two lonely years in her own filth while my sister scoured the shires for two honest doctors who would examine her in situ, correctly diagnose her, and get her into care, something that finally happened in the Fall of 2009. The local NHS “Elder Care Team,” which was supposed to be looking into her case, was scared off by mum’s leaning out the bathroom window when she saw them coming and screaming “F*** Off!” at the top of her lungs. They never returned. (Our first attempts to get Mum into care in the summer of 2006 (when the family was together and I was in the UK) failed when my uncle and his brother-in-law (a Canon in the Church of England), neither of whom had actually seen my mother for at least fifteen years, neither of whom had any standing comparable to being Mum’s husband or her children, but both of whom were squeamish about the idea of a family member being diagnosed as mentally ill, wrote to the local NHS Trust, told them that the “daughter from America” had an “agenda” and was controlling the situation, that Mum was fine, didn’t need to be seen by a psychiatrist, and that the doctors should butt out. They did so, and my mother paid the price for her brother’s interference. But that’s a whole ‘nother story…).
My father (who was walking with two sticks, and who moved out of the house in that summer of 2006 because Mum had gone completely round the bend by then and was physically assaulting him), found himself a nice little flat fairly close by the home he thought he’d spend the rest of his life in, and then about six months later, fell and broke his hip. His NHS visiting nurses and physical therapists deserted him because he–an 88 year old man in terrible pain–“shouted” at them and they felt “unsafe.” He died in hospital less than a year after breaking his hip.
Auntie Pat (99 next month, almost blind, and with “mobility issues” which I’m pretty sure surpass Queen Elizabeth’s) has a private doctor who makes house calls. The NHS clinic expect her to “Zoom” into their orbit, or–on the rare occasions when they consented to an “in-person” office visit (something that’s almost impossible to get these days), that she must get on the bus and go to them. She has a friend who delivers her urine samples to the local clinic, because the NHS can’t seem to work out how to collect them. (Pat’s in a huge elderly-living complex. I doubt she’s the only ancient crone there in need of regular medical care. You’d think the NHS could manage to service them somehow, in their spare time and when they’re not aborting babies at no charge for the rest of the world.)
Currently, a close relative is trying to get out from under a serious seizure episode from almost a year ago. It took six months to get an MRI, at a hospital almost a day trip away from home in Scotland. (The local hospital boasts, on its little web page, that it “has an X-Ray machine.”) It took another month to schedule the phone call with the consultant to discuss the results. As of today, almost a year after the seizure episode, the diagnosis of “epilepsy” has still not been ruled out, and my relative is still without a driver’s license. I’m not sure what happens next, or when, or if.
The National Health Service is Britain’s disgrace.
I suspect he was quick to make a buck.
The Telegraph hasn’t removed my comment on its post. This has improved my batting average, which has been suffering of late:
There are several States here that offer abortions after 24 weeks and given air fares it would seem they could be procured at lesser cost State side.
Have they also considered how they would address the ignorant American that presents herself/himself/zeself/… (since we now know all genders are capable of birthing) after 24 weeks in the UK?
Perhaps abortions for Americans would be approved anytime during pregnancy and almost immediately upon presentation.
We’re all lead to believe the world will be better off with fewer Americans, so that would fit the agenda. It’s all just part of the Great Reset.
Good questions. My thoughts were running along the same lines, especially that of the American showing up at 28 weeks pregnant and demanding her “free” abortion with no questions asked. I think a great many Americans would be shocked at the abortion restrictions that are imposed throughout Europe, especially in those socialist countries the Left thinks so much of.)
I bet you’re right! I guess I’m too shortsighted to see the big picture. LOL.
The Brits, up to and including Boris Johnson (who was born in New York) really don’t have any idea how things work this side of the pond and most of them seem to believe that the Supreme Court imposed an immediate, nationwide, ban on abortion.
I’m waiting for the first lawsuit against one of these companies that are now providing up to $7500 (Zillow) reimbursement to their employees who travel to a state that allows abortion on their terms just so they can get one, because an employee wants to use the money to fly to the UK and get one there instead, and have a holiday to boot. Things are just about that lunatical right now that such a thing wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Brava!
On Fox News the other day – don’t remember if it was Gutfeld or The Five – they were making fun of the “ladies” of “The View” again, having gone to the Bahamas to protest SCOTUS. Apparently they didn’t know that abortion is illegal in the Bahamas.
May she live forever!
Most left-of-center Americans seem to believe this as well.
I think they were there on vacation, not specifically as part of a protest, when the decision came down. They are still clueless though. As is Emmanuel Macron, who condemned the Supreme Court decision, along with pledging ‘solidarity’ with American women and their fundamental rights, bla bla bla. Apparently he’s not aware that the Mississippi abortion law that SCOTUS upheld (15 weeks) is actually more generous than that of France, which limits abortion on demand to the first 14 weeks and makes it quite difficult to get one after that point.
Time for the women of Mississippi to march in solidarity with the women of France!
The hypocrisy, and the ignorance, lives loudly in these people.
LOL–I had the same thought when I read that line!
Bless you both!
You’d think they would know better than to even vacation in a place where abortion is illegal.
It all sounds like moving the Atlanta MLB game in protest of the new Georgia election laws, to Colorado which has STRICTER election laws.
As does Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware.
But, at least they’re doing something. Isn’t that the standard? Just what have you done?
Laughed and laughed.
Funny, Zillow is located in Seattle, and abortion is enshrined in the health insurance regs. No one who wants an abortion in Washington State will be turned away. Planned Parenthood is setting up right on the Idaho border to provide abortions for all the ladies who can’t get one in Idaho.
Particularly ones from states that are not going to impose any restrictions whatsoever on abortion.