The New Yorker posts a chart showing the damage done by unlicensed doctors in unauthorized clinics, the doctors to whom women seeking abortions now turn when they can't get care from legitimate clinic.
For this you can thank those"moral" neighbors in your community who, among others across the nation, are working to destroy available healthcare and reproductive choice in their area. Result: the return of butcher shops -- just like the bad old days. They're back in business.
The existence of such clinics, which cater mostly to low-income women with limited options, is not entirely surprising. As reputable doctors, hospitals, and medical schools have increasingly distanced themselves from abortion, substandard providers have materialized to fill the void. ... After Roe v. Wade, there was a decade of increasing access to care before the start of an ongoing downward trend—since 1982, more than a thousand providers have closed. This decrease has disproportionately affected the South and the Midwest, which in 2008 were home to sixty per cent of the national population but only thirty per cent of the country’s abortion providers. ...NewYorker
Nice going, America.
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Why do we so often indulge in self-destructive behaviors -- like sponsoring legislation that results in the return of abortion butchers ? Seems to me that the radical right is too often supported by groups that essentially want to destroy themselves and their communities.
Take Cathy McMorris Rogers, the official Republican responder to the State of the Union speech. Tim Egan writes in the New York Times about Washington state representative whose votes set her against -- and damage -- her own constituents.
Her district, poorer than the west side of the state, with much of the broken-family, broken-promise poverty of white rural America, is in real trouble. But the policy prescriptions of McMorris Rodgers have nothing to offer these people. Through her, you can see what happens when biography trumps substance in politics.
Consider Stevens County, her home, an area about half the size of Connecticut with fewer than 50,000 people. It’s gorgeous country, hard by the Columbia River, but a hard place to make a decent living. The county’s unemployment rate was 30 percent above the national average last year. One in six people live below the poverty level. One in five are on food stamps. And the leading employer is government, providing 3,023 of the 9,580 nonfarm payroll jobs last year.
Given that picture, it would seem surprising that McMorris Rodgers voted to drastically cut food aid last year, and joined her party in resisting emergency benefits to the unemployed. She has been a leading strategist in the unrelenting Republican attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act.
And yet, in her district, people are flocking to Obamacare — well beyond the national average. Though she has been screening town hall meetings to highlight only critics of the new law, her constituents are doing something entirely different in making their personal health decisions. ...NYT
She opposes federal government. But she's been on the take for pretty much her whole life: " She’s been on a state or federal payroll since graduating from Pensacola Christian College, in the early 1990s," Egan reports.
Why on earth does her district send her to Congress? This craziness, and other pieces of news today make me wonder how deep we are in a pattern of self-destruction, and what it is that makes us self-destructive. Curiously enough, narcissism -- and shame, lurking in the background -- seem to play a strong role.
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What really set me off on the subject of what we're doing to ourselves was the story on NPR this morning about a mother in Montana whose husband lost his good, local job and has been forced to "commute" to Williston, North Dakota, the new oil boom town. Jennifer would move to Williston with child and husband except the crime in Williston has gotten so bad she doesn't think it's safe there for their child. Why so much crime? Why is crime in an oil boom town somehow acceptable, somehow just a fact of life?
Here's part of a report from CNNMoney about "America's Biggest Boomtown":
Last year, the number of criminal incidents reported to the Williston Police Department nearly tripled to 16,495. But that's only a fraction of the lawlessness the police have seen this year.
"The numbers we are seeing for this year will blow these out of the water," said Lieutenant David Belisle.
In a single month this summer, the department received 1,000 calls -- compared to the 4,000 calls it received in the three-year period between 2007 and 2009. This year, 9-1-1 calls to the department have already more than tripled last year's call volume, he said.
Thefts at residences and retailers -- especially jewelers and convenience stores -- have jumped precipitously, with police responding to 40% more burglar alarms last year than the previous year.
Many of the thieves are looking for prescription drugs like Oxycontin -- which are being stolen from residences and drugstores.
Josslyn Finck, the manager of Barrett's pharmacy in nearby Watford City, said someone recently torched the steel door of her pharmacy and stole $16,000 of narcotics in the middle of a power outage. Before this year, small incidents of shoplifting -- like someone pocketing a Chap Stick -- were the only crimes she had encountered.
The break-in at Barrett's was one of a string of similar incidents at pharmacies that began this year, said Detective Lieutenant Mark Hanson, who has worked 34 years as an officer and was born in Williston.
According to the police department, prescription drug abuse and prescription forgery are on the rise and a growing number of oilfield employees are failing their urinalysis tests.
Alcohol-related incidents are also surging. And since oilfield employees work around-the-clock shifts, police have to remain constantly vigilant.
"Our D.U.I.s are ranging throughout all hours of the day, our alcohol-related assaults are ranging throughout the day, our foot pursuits and vehicle pursuits are ranging throughout the day," said detective David Peterson.
Assault and battery incidents in Williston rose 171% to 38 charges last year. Two years ago, there may have been three-to-four violent crimes a week. Now, it's an average of two or three a night.
"Violent crimes in our night clubs, family violence -- all of that has increased," said Peterson. "We get calls from people who are going home at night after the club has closed and they're at an intersection and somebody they don't even know will pull up beside them, maybe make a comment to them, and then physically assault them."
The lack of housing seems to be a huge driver in the uptick in violence, said Peterson.
Oh well. Shrug.
It's competely nuts.
