Amnio
So apparently Andrew Sullivan isn’t going to print the note I sent him this morning about Angela and my experience with pre-natal testing during her pregnancy with our son Jack:
As the father of a young child, let me fill you in on the way that the average OB-GYN lays on the pressure when it comes to amniocentesis, ultrasounds, and other forms of pre-natal testing. Unless a couple finds a doctor who is either strongly pro-life or hugely exceptional in his or her willingness to deviate from standard practice and genuinely respect a woman’s (or a couple’s) wishes, the look that you get when you say you want to forgo one of these tests (or do pretty much anything else “out of the ordinary”, e.g. avoid medical intervention during childbirth, decline certain vaccines or post-natal tests, co-sleep, breastfeed exclusively, etc.) is the sort of look that our society reserves for backwards know-nothings, and it’s highly likely that the doctor will do everything he or she can to deny the lack of rationale for the procedures and downplay their associated risks. My wife and I experienced this first-hand: we told our doctor we had no interest in checking for disorders or deformities, and while he did let us off the hook with amnio, he pretty much tricked us into another set of tests that looked for genetic anomalies. (My wife’s insurance, which is through a Catholic university where she is a student, didn’t cover the tests, leaving us stuck with a $600 bill.) And this was for a couple in their twenties, high on principle and with nothing better to do but read tons of baby books and pick fights with our OB (who has a reputation for being quite flexible and countercultural) … I can’t really imagine what a woman in Sarah Palin’s situation would have been up against, and what the response would have been if she’d tried to tell her doctor “No”.
Could Palin have declined the amnio? Surely. Should she have? I think so – and not only because the test poses a risk to the child, but also because agreeing to it makes you de facto complicit in our society’s embrace of eugenics. But given the way that the medical establishment downplays risks and insists on doing everything they can imagine “just in case”, there are no real grounds for making this an issue.
If Angela can find the time, she’ll write up a C11 diary on this experience later this afternoon. Suffice it for now to say that a man with an admitted agenda who’s never experienced a pregnancy first-hand really ought to (avert your eyes, sensitive ones) shut the fuck up when it comes to questions over how a 43-year-old woman decided to handle her fifth pregnancy. Then again, at this point it’s hard to expect anything different.
[UPDATE: And see Robert Stacy McCain.]
Filed under: abortion, family, science/tech
My wife and I made the same decision Sarah did, for the same reasons. Apparently, to Saint Andrew this makes us religious hypocrites, since we are pro-life.
Andrew is just self-righteous Wen 2.0 Joe McCarthy, doing everything he can to smear this women simply because she is politically on the other side. And then he goes and talks about his great tolerance…
I’m not sure how they do things in Alaska, but both my children were born in California and here the pressure is HUGE to cull out ‘unfit’ children. The state of California requires OB/GYNS to perform an alpha-fetal-protein (AFP) blood test on all pregnant women, unless the woman specifically signs a waiver. The state of California pays for each of these tests and runs them in their own labs. If the test comes back ‘positve’ the pressure is on for an amnio. And why does the state have an interest in whether or not women do pre-natal genetic testing? Well, because handicapped children are eligible for medical and educational benefits. The AFP racket is a cost-savings program of course.
We refused the test with both of our children and only received some raised eyebrows. However, I was under 30 with both pregnancies. I have to say that with both of my pregnancies it seemed the OB/GYN industry was out to make sure at any given time that I hadn’t ‘changed my mind.’ From the first phone call from the student health nurse telling me my pregnancy test was positive in which the nurse called me up with literally NO IDEA what to do next if I wasn’t going to abort, to the mounds and mounds of literature I received on genetic testing, the whole experience was just creepy.
Sorry, but someone who’s made a political career out of intruding into other women’s private lives shouldn’t whine and complain when her private life is subjected to the most modest of scrutiny.
How convenient of conservatives like you to NOW be offended when politics are made out of someone’s private medical decisions.
Sarah: We live in California as well, and that was exactly our experience.
Well, I am very pro-choice and I refused amnio for my first viable pregnancy ( i suffered two miscarriages before that) and am refusing it in my current pregnancy. I don’t want to risk losing this baby. I just don’t understand how someone as anti-abortion or “pro-life” as Palin claims to be, someone who would force rape and incest victims to carry a pregnancy to term against their will, would cave into an OB’s pressure to have that test done. I think it was/is hypocritical of her to CHOOSE to have this optional test done, knowing that it could result in the death of a baby, and yet continue to claim to be “pro-life”. It WAS her choice, if Palin,as a grown woman and mother of four and somone who supposedly is strong enough to stare down Putin and terrorists, cannot tell her OB thanks for your medical opinion, but I am not going to choose to do something that could kill my baby–that makes NO sense. I am an older mom, I know we could end up with a baby with DS, and you know how I prepared with my first and now with this pregnancy, I have read up on the condition, discussed it with my husband, Ob and pediatrician. I am about as prepared as I can be without putting the baby at risk with an amnio to “know for sure”.
Lulu: I very much see where you’re coming from, and as I said in my original post I think she should have refused the test. But in the first place many people just don’t know about the risks that come with amnio, and even when people have heard about those risks they’re exactly the sort of thing that doctors tend to brush off as so much irrelevant folklore.
For a man who wrote so passionately and convincingly (in my mind, at least) of the importance of privacy in “Virtually Normal” Sullivan has developed a weird and creepy interest in Gov. Palin’s uterus.
Great haters become the thing they hate the most. Andrew has become Karl Rove.
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John,
I agree with you that Andrew has been grasping at straws ever since the Palin announcement, but I just want to say that we never experienced any pressure from our OB/GYN to undergo and amniocentesis. In fact, and I’ll have to check with my wife on this to be sure, we were never even offered the procedure. Our OB was very professional and I don’t get the sense that he would allow any kind of politics to interfere with his job. But I live in Atlanta, Georgia so I didn’t experience the nanny-state pressure that the California laws mandate. I’d be curious what the Alaska laws are, if any. Regarding Andrew, if that’s what the Obama defenders are filling their time and blogs with, then Obama doesn’t stand a chance. Whatever happened to real arguments about issues? Andrew used to complain about that.
Thanks, Alex. I did a bit of poking around and couldn’t find any AK laws on pre-natal testing – given Palin’s age, though, it would have been a very extraordinary thing for her to have refused the amniocentesis. (The way these things work is that first you get what is called an alpha-fetal protein test, and then if that is positive you are encouraged to get an amnio – did your wife get the former?) As to the strangeness of Andrew’s fixation on this topic at the expense of actual issues … yep.
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Just wanted to say this: I had the AFP tests when I was pregnant with my son, and the results put me into a ‘higher risk’ bracket. I chose not to have the amnio because of the risk of miscarriage, but was frantic about the AFP results for months. My son was born without Downs. When I was pregnant with my daughter I refused the AFP tests. The doctor was very upset about it, and when I said, I’m not terminating a pregnancy for that reason, he went into the whole ‘you can be prepared thing’ but I just said no. We talked about it for over an hour and he made me sign papers saying I refused to take the tests.
Two things about this: yes, the doctors are very pushy about these tests, but I’m a total pushover and I still managed to say no. They can’t make you do it.
But two, I’m a very pro-Choice, fervent Obama supporter and I think every woman’s decisions regarding her pregnancy should be private. Even Palin’s.
I have three teenagers. I remember having the AFP test. No amnio however. No ultrasound with the first two pregnancies either. We had midwives and a really progressive OB back then. With our third child, we had an ultrasound about three months before she was born because of abnormal growth patterns – turned out she was just developing on her own timetable. But my impression has been that doctors tell women/couples that YOU HAVE TO HAVE THESE TESTS – that it is state law in some cases. I haven’t found any evidence that in MA where I live that amnio is required by law tho I haven’t checked into AFP. Probably if that is required by law, it has as much to do with litigation fear within the medical community as it does with costs fears in the political community. Honestly, a lot of diagnostic testing offered by physicians appears to be done out of fear of being sued because the physician didn’t “do enough”. That’s why you have to sign away your life if you refuse the tests. That protects them from being liable for anything later on. I know this sounds cynical, and it likely is, but it’s also fairly accurate from what my doc friends have told me.
Point from above comment – I am concerned that someone who could someday be responsible for launching nuclear missiles or going toe to toe with the federal reserve chairman was unable to stare down her OB when it came to prenatal testing – assuming she wanted to in the first place. And at this point, we’ll never know the real story – ever.
Me, I’m pro-choice, rabidly pro-birth-the-way-you-want, and really irked by those who insist that anyone who even considers an amnio is thinking of having an abortion. Because, to be fair, lots of people are pressured into testing that they’d probably not have if they really were given the time to think on it, prenatal or otherwise.
Oh, and the reason that you are told to have amnio at such and such an age is that the risk of miscarriage from the procedure is the same as the risk of having a child with Down Syndrome. Two risks that are entirely unrelated – but the risk lines cross so that’s why you get to be pressured into it at that age. Go statistics!
OK, done ranting. Great blog BTW.