ON THE SOAPBOX:

Who Controls a Woman's Body?

I would remind you of a time- not even 100 years ago-when women could still be put away in mental hospitals because they disobeyed their husbands. Are we now to suffer the insanity tag because we disobey our doctors?

I'll bet the women who took thalidomide in the 1950's wish they'd disobeyed their doctors' advice. Do you remember that drug? It resulted in babies being born without legs and arms.

What did the doctors say? "Oops, sorry"?

Was any doctor charged with murder, child endangerment, abuse, assault with intent to do bodily harm? I don't remember any.

Cerebral palsy has been linked to birth injury. And a recent survey that I heard casually mentioned on the radio said that 40,000 people die or are injured every year because of doctor error.

Doctors are not empirical; they are not always right; they make mistakes. Yet, if I decide that what the doctor is advising me involves too much risk and I'm wrong, it's not a mistake, it's apparently a criminal act.

Let me tell you a personal story. I fell down the steps about a year ago; and I pulled something. I was afraid I'd ripped something. I tried to go to the urgent care center the next day at GBMC; but because the pain was in my chest, they forced me into the emergency room, treated me as a cardiac care patient, charged me $850 for tests I didn't need, and announced with great fanfare after 5 hours that I hadn't had a heart attack.

"I knew that when I came in here," I said, "What I want to know is what did happen?"

"Oh, you probably pulled a muscle," said the doctor offhandedly.

Because it continued to bother me, about 6 months afterward I went down to a clinic at Mercy. (I wasn't going back to GBMC.) When I told the doctor at Mercy what was bothering me, he felt around a little and pronounced me as having acid reflux disease and recommended "the purple pill." I almost hit him.

Should I be arrested because I didn't follow up with my cardiac care at GBMC or take the purple pill for my imaginary ARD?

Maybe the lady in Utah has had experiences similar to mine. Or perhaps she felt that rather than taking the risks of major surgery, her pregnancy was better left to nature and God.

Whatever the case, it is her body and the bodies of her growing babies that would have been violated. Unless some court had determined her to be mentally incompetent, it was her choice to decide what was the lesser risk.

When I March For Women's Lives on April 25, I'll be thinking of this woman, and every other woman who's ever been held criminally responsible for calling her body her own.