People are stupid.

[theweaselking]

"Pro-life" nurse sued for removing IUD from patient without permission, then lecturing her about how IUDs cause abortion.

Bonus points: She's done this repeatedly She does this, in fact, to every patient with an IUD she can get her hands into. And she insists it's legal because she's always "accidentally" pulling out the IUD and then refusing to help replace it because she has a "conscience clause" that says she doesn't have to perform any procedures the voices in her head tell her are icky.

Comments

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Reasonable Person Standard.

Open and shut conviction, man.

Too bad there is no sentence for abuse of the Socratic Method.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as a Reasonable Person Standard when you're talking about "freedom of conscience" laws.

First: They don't contain one.

Second: If they did, you'd be arguing the "reasonability" of someone's claim of "deeply held personal religious beliefs". Which is a First Amendment nightmare, with good reason.

Third: She's committed no crime. This is a lawsuit, not a criminal proceeding.

Fourth: By definition, a "reasonable person" cannot have a religious position that conflicts with their job duties.

[theamaranth.livejournal.com]

i dont see how yanking out a piece of medical equipment and then refusing to put it back IS NOT a crime!!!!

OMG, what if this shit was a pacemaker????

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Hmmmm...could they sue for malpractice? Is malpractice a crime?

[elffin.livejournal.com]

She /has/ committed a crime - assault. Her actions, to a reasonable person, cannot constitute medical care and must, to a reasonable person, constitute assault, as they were performed outside of a standard of medical practice, and demonstrably per a non-medical agenda. It need not ever touch on her religious beliefs, merely that what she did was outside the bounds of medical practice and was done aforethought, which constitutes /mens rea/, and thus malice aforethought.

She's resting on the "freedom of conscience" law for not /replacing/ the IUD. Her actions in repeatedly removing them - and she will utterly convict herself if she attempts to apply the "freedom of conscience" to it - avows the "freedom of conscience" law.

She isn't a reasonable person, but the reasonable person of the reasonable person standard would know that her actions aren't medical, are on purpose, and are assault.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

To answer your points:

First: Reasonable Person Standard is not a law, it's a legal test crafted (IIRC) to originally address workplace sexual harassment cases. Therefore, the standards don't have to be written into the laws.

Second: "Reasonability" applies not to the defendant, as you infer, but to the plaintiff. The court simply must answer whether or not a reasonable person placed in a similar position would consider the incident offensive and therefore actionable.

Third: Those workplace harassment cases were also lawsuits, not trials for crime, so the same precedents might apply.

Fourth: (See Second)

I agree, it should be an open and slammed shut decision.

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

I would have thought it would have made assault or even gbh


/not trained in law

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

I read this earlier today.

It still makes me spontaneously spew a string of expletives.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If it makes you do it, is it still "spontaneous"?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

It's unpremeditated, impulsive, and automatic.

That fulfills the criteria for spontaneous in my book.

[gebkivistik.livejournal.com]

A "nurse" who doesn't understand how an IUD works should be fired for that reason alone.

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

Weeelll.... sometimes conception can take place with an IUD, depending on the type. Inert IUDs just prevent implantation. Hormonal IUDs suppress ovulation, too, but their secondary effect is still meant to be preventing implantation of a pre-implantation embryo.

It isn't a completely unreasonable statement to say that that process constitutes an abortion. What's unreasonable is the idea that a woman doesn't have the right to have an IUD, or to get an abortion, if she wants to.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Nope. Tubal irrigations of women with IUDs who just had sex shows very few sperm, and sensitive hCG measurements shows far fewer spikes from unimplanted zygotes in women with IUDs than in women without. This is because the copper in the copper IUD kills sperm, and the endometrium has a constant, low-grade inflammation, which hinders the sperm from travelling upwards. The hormonal IUD works by making the cervical fluids and endometrium inhospitable to sperm. It only stops ovulation in a minority of women.

[graethorne.livejournal.com]

...have an insistent itch in my index fingers...

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend the lawyer said, when I read this article to him, "Oh god. Just give her [the plaintiff] all your money. All the clinic's money too. You guys get no more money."

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Because it's sure that there's no way anyone is going to value any services they might attempt to trade on, which leaves liquidatables.

[theamaranth.livejournal.com]

i enjoy your icon, miz goddess. ;)

[hakerh.livejournal.com]

If somebody ripped my IUD out without warning or the chance for me to take some painkillers first, they wouldn't have lived to see trial. It wouldn't have been a deliberate thing, either - just both my heels connecting with their face out of sheer instinct. Getting my IUD *in* was so incredibly painful.

/legs crossing in memory

EDIT to add: My boyfriend, upon being told of this, advises said "nurse" that the following phrase should be helpful to her in her new career: "Would you like fries with that?" And that if they ask the manager real nice, maybe all her former coworkers can be on the same shift!

[camelai.livejournal.com]

Oooh, pretty icon! Do you mind if I steal?

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

This is what I was thinking. How do you ACCIDENTALLY rip that through her cervix? Remembering the shape of the T, it seems like it'd be a lot more painful coming out than going in, too. So... assault sounds right, for her charge.

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

just both my heels connecting with their face out of sheer instinct.

Now see? That's the proper response to someone removing an IUD without warning.

[endotoxin.livejournal.com]

"Hey it just..." *tugtug* "Yaknow slipped out..." *YANKTUG* "Silly little thing's are always coming loose..." *TUGYANKPRY*

And this is happening in my hometown. And so help me, I can't really say I'm surprised.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

I am fairly sure that a simple test can be done to determine whether she was doing it negligently or not.

In a small but not-insignificant percentage of IUD use, the IUD can become implanted in, and/or migrate through, the uterine wall. The process of "tugging" the cord in the way she did without determining whether or not the IUD had implaneted in or was in the process of migrating through the uterine wall would be telling as to whether she was practicing to a standard of care.

My money is on the possibility that she never checked for implantation / migration.

[heraldofchaos.livejournal.com]

ive often been a strong believer that everyone has a right to their own opinion, however their opinion stops when it infringes on mine...

somehow i think having your fingers that far in someone to arrange and accident based on ones opinion kinda crosses a whole bunch of lines i dont even want to think about...

[wherever.livejournal.com]

If there was any justice, she'd be fired, lose her license, and criminal charges brought, as well as being sued. Leaving alone the whole idea of pro-choice vs pro-life, taking it upon herself to mess around in the uterus of her patient who had trusted her is sickening.

The kicker is that fucking bitch probably thinks she's doing "God's Work". She should join a church and get the hell out of medicine. She's being employed to do a job and she's not doing it, plain and simple.

On a purely practical level, if the clinic has any brains, they'll fire her, simply because she's a liability - people will keep suing her if she keeps this shit up, and she will give them a bad name.