To All Healthcare Providers in a Post-Roe World:

I've been reading articles like this all week and I want to vomit.  Combined with the personal stories I'm seeing on social media, I've never been so scared to live in the U.S.  And it was pretty fucking horrifying to live here through COVID as we (well, YOU) allowed the hospitals to be overrun with anti-vax science denialists for the last 2 years because you refused to enact rational, ethical triage protocols.  

It's utterly appalling that pharmacists are taking it upon themselves to deny patients access to prescribed medications like methotrexate because they fear they "might" be used off-label to induce abortion.  That's not your call.  Pharmacists already act as an obnoxious barrier to much-needed medications, giving patients the 3rd degree about drugs that are legally prescribed to them by doctors such as pain or ADHD medications.  The fact that they might now prevent terminal cancer, autoimmune disease or other patients with serious diseases from obtaining their much-needed meds because they're concerned about jeopardizing THEIR licenses is as unethical as it gets.  It's one thing if you're genuinely concerned about the patient overdosing or combining drugs like opiates & depressants; it's another when you're only worried about possible consequences for yourself.  If you can't handle the risks associated with your profession, find another one.  

Ditto all the doctors in ERs and OB/GYN units across the country who are electing to let women with ectopic pregnancies & pre-eclampsia code & die as you call your lawyer or simply turn them away in fear of losing your license.  Shame on you.  (I implore any nurses or others who witness these horrors to leave reviews & include the names of these butchers when sharing these stories so women know who NOT to entrust our lives to).  

When in doubt, please refer to the Hippocratic Oath you swore to uphold at the beginning of your career, remembering that violating it is considered medical malpractice.  If someone comes to you to save their life, refusing to do so for fear of losing your license is not only doing them harm but sentencing them to death.  In such a case you not only deserve to lose your license but to go to prison as well.  (Well, I suppose a judge or jury can decide that, but it certainly warrants serious legal action & a trial).  In no universe should you be able to turn a patient away for fear of treating them because you don't understand the laws around abortion or how they might affect your precious little career.  Again, if you're not sure or don't have the courage to save the life of a desperate dying patient, please choose a less consequential career.  I hear a lot of fast food joints are hiring.

We're at a point where doctors, nurses & other medical providers--the ones with a conscience--are going to start quitting en masse due to moral injury which will be catastrophic & irreversible.  This is the same thing we see in war veterans who are forced to kill innocent people & are told it's for a greater cause yet aren't able to square this with the reality of what they're seeing and feeling inside.  It already happened with COVID as doctors & nurses across the country watched patients die miserably & were forced to ration care while working to the point of exhaustion.  It would be far more impactful to organize, protest these unjust abortion laws & try to prevent this inevitable (further) decline in America's medical system now than to sit back & wait for the fallout.  Either way, you're going to end up walking out.  Why wait until your psyche is broken beyond repair?  A general healthcare strike is long overdue in this country.

It's really a question of how many immoral, unjust orders you're willing to follow.  I'm sure many of the Germans living under Nazi rule; a few of Unit 731's "scientists" & many others involved in history's horrors were "good people just following orders".  It's just that, without those enablers, those crimes against humanity couldn't have been carried out.  At some point we've got to make a conscious choice to stop repeating our mistakes as a species & evolve.