Ég vil líkjast....

Það er ekki hægt að opna nokkurn fjölmiðill án þess að rekast á umfjöllun um forkosningarnar í Bandaríkjunum, sem fram fara þessar vikurnar.  Spennan er enda mikil og hart barist.

Það er nokkuð áberandi hve frambjóðendur vilja tengja sig við eldri hetjur flokka sinna.

Þannig má segja að Obama vilji gjarna að kjósendur líti á sig sem nýmóðins útgáfu af John F. Kennedy, frambjóðendur Rebúblikanaflokksins stilla sér upp sem arftaka Reagans og Clinton segist vera ný útgáfa Clinton.

Tóm tjara

Það hefur verið hálf spaugilegt að fylgjast með umræðunni um reykingar og "reykingaklefa" á Íslandi nú undanfarnar vikur.

Auðvitað á að ganga til baka og afnema þessi lög og gefa veitingamönnum yfirráð yfir eignum sínum aftur.

Auðvitað var það fyrirséð að það skapaði vandræði þegar bannað væri að reykja innandyra.  Ráp eykst, sérstaklega óþægilegt fyrir þá staði sem selja inn, vínburður út af veitingastöðum eykst og óánægja viðskiptavina eykst.

Á sólríkum sumardögum sjá reykingamenn hins vegar enga ástæðu til að fara á veitingastaði ef þeir þurfa að fara út á hálftíma fresti eða svo, og kjósa þá jafnvel frekar að beina viðskiptum sínum að kælinum í ÁTVR í Austurstræti, enda mun þægilegra að drekka og reykja á Austurvelli, heldur en að drekka á einhverjum veitingastað og reykja á Austurvelli.

Persónulega hef ég aldrei skilið þau rök, þegar einhver telur sig eiga rétt á því að sitja í reykleysi á einhverjum veitingastað.

Sjálfur hef ég litið svo á að ég hafi rétt á því að velja á hvaða veitingastað og fer eingöngu á þann sem ég kann við.  En ég hef aldrei litið svo á að ég eigi heimtingu á því að staðurinn sé á einn eða annan veg, ekki frekar en ég get krafist þess að hann bjóði upp á þær veitingar sem ég helst kýs.

Einu rökin sem hafa einhverja vigt hvað varðar bannið, er aðstaða starfsfólks.  Þannig gæti hið opinbera sett lög þar sem sett eru skilyrði hvað varðar hreinleika lofts, og loftræstibúnaður yrði þá að anna slíku, til að staðurinn mætti hafa opið.

En slík rök eru þó ekki nóg að mínu mati.  Ekki í borg þar sem svifryk fer yfir hættumörk marga daga á ári.  En líklega verður Reykjavíkurborg innsigluð, eftir nokkrar aðvaranir þar að lútandi.

Hitt er svo líka að auðvitað eru ýmis störf sem geta haft slæm áhrif á heilsuna, en samt vinnur fjöldi fólks slík störf.

Ákvörðunin á að liggja hjá vertinum, ekki hinu opinbera.

Garson Romalis: Hvers vegna eyði ég fóstrum?

Stundum les ég greinar í dagblöðum, í tímaritum, nú eða á vefnum sem mér þykja hrein snilld, svo vel fram settar að þær hrífa mig með.  Ég rakst á eina slíka í kvöld, á vef National Post.

Greinin er skrifuð af Kanadíska lækninum Garson Romalis og er í raun ræða sem hann flutti nýlega í Toronto háskóla.  Yfirskrift ræðunnar er (lauslega þýtt):  Hvers vegna eyði ég fóstrum.

Þetta innlegg í umræðuna frá lækni sem sem hefur framkvæmt fóstureyðingar í áratugi og tvisvar sinnum verið sýnt banatilræði vegna þeirra, er tæpitungulaus og góð og holl lesning.

Hér í Kanada er ennþá verulega skiptar skoðanir um fóstureyðingarlöggjöfina og má oft sjá mótmæli gegn henni hér og þar, flest eru þau þó friðsamleg og sem betur fer sjaldgæfar undantekningar að ofbeldi eða morðtilraunum sé beitt í baráttunni.

En ég hvet alla til að lesa ræðuna, sem ég "peistaði" hér fyrir neðan en hana má annars finna á vef National Post.

"I am honoured to be speaking today, and honored to call Henry Morgentaler my friend.

I have been an abortion provider since 1972. Why do I do abortions, and why do I continue to do abortions, despite two murder attempts?

The first time I started to think about abortion was in 1960, when I was in secondyear medical school. I was assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had aborted herself using slippery elm bark.

I had never heard of slippery elm. A buddy and I went down to skid row, and without too much difficulty, purchased some slippery elm bark to use as a visual aid in our presentation. Slippery elm is not sterile, and frequently contains spores of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. It is called slippery elm because, when it gets wet, it feels slippery. This makes it easier to slide slender pieces through the cervix where they absorb water, expand, dilate the cervix, produce infection and induce abortion. The young woman in our case developed an overwhelming infection. At autopsy she had multiple abscesses throughout her body, in her brain, lungs, liver and abdomen.

I have never forgotten that case.

After I graduated from University of British Columbia medical school in 1962, I went to Chicago, where I served my internship and Ob/Gyn residency at Cook County Hospital. At that time, Cook County had about 3,000 beds, and served a mainly indigent population. If you were really sick, or really poor, or both, Cook County was where you went.

The first month of my internship was spent on Ward 41, the septic obstetrics ward. Yes, it's hard to believe now, but in those days, they had one ward dedicated exclusively to septic complications of pregnancy.

About 90% of the patients were there with complications of septic abortion. The ward had about 40 beds, in addition to extra beds which lined the halls. Each day we admitted between 10-30 septic abortion patients. We had about one death a month, usually from septic shock associated with hemorrhage.

I will never forget the 17-year-old girl lying on a stretcher with 6 feet of small bowel protruding from her vagina. She survived.

I will never forget the jaundiced woman in liver and kidney failure, in septic shock, with very severe anemia, whose life we were unable to save.

Today, in Canada and the U.S., septic shock from illegal abortion is virtually never seen. Like smallpox, it is a "disappeared disease."

I had originally been drawn to obstetrics and gynecology because I loved delivering babies. Abortion was illegal when I trained, so I did not learn how to do abortions in my residency, although I had more than my share of experience looking after illegal abortion complications.

In 1972, a couple of years after the law on abortion was liberalized, I began the practise of obstetrics and gynecology, and joined a three-man group in Vancouver. My practice partners and I believed strongly that a woman should be able to decide for herself if and when to have a baby. We were frequently asked to look after women who needed termination of pregnancy. Although I had done virtually no terminations in my training, I soon learned how. I also learned just how much demand there was for abortion services.

Providing abortion services can be quite stressful. Usually, an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is the worst trouble the patient has ever been in in her entire life.

I remember one 18-year-old patient who desperately wanted an abortion, but felt she could not confide in her mother, who was a nurse in another Vancouver area hospital. She impressed on me how important it was that her termination remain a secret from her family. In those years, parental consent was required if the patient was less than 19 years old. I obtained the required second opinion from a colleague, and performed an abortion on her.

About two weeks, later I received a phone call from her mother. She asked me directly "Did you do an abortion on my daughter?" Visions of legal suit passed through my mind as I tried to think of how to answer her question. I decided to answer directly and truthfully. I answered with trepidation, "Yes, I did" and started to make mental preparations to call my lawyer. The mother replied: "Thank you, Doctor. Thank God there are people like you around."

Like many of my colleagues, I had been the subject of antiabortion picketing, particularly in the 1980s. I did not like having my office and home picketed, or nails thrown into my driveway, but viewed these picketers as a nuisance, exercising their right of free speech. Being in Canada, I felt I did not have to worry about my physical security.

I had been a medical doctor for 32 years when I was shot at 7:10 a.m., Nov. 8, 1994. For over half my life, I had been providing obstetrical and gynecological care, including abortions. It is still hard for me to understand how someone could think I should be killed for helping women get safe abortions.

I had a very severe gun shot wound to my left thigh. My thigh bone was fractured, large blood vessels severed, and a large amount of my thigh muscles destroyed. I almost died several times from blood loss and multiple other complications. After about two years of physical and emotional rehabilitation, with a great deal of support from my family and the medical community, I was able to resume work on a part-time basis. I was no longer able to deliver babies or perform major gynecological surgery. I had to take security measures, but I continued to work as a gynecologist, including providing abortion services. My life had changed, but my views on choice remained unchanged, and I was continuing to enjoy practicing medicine. I told people that I was shot in the thigh, not in my sense of humour.

Six years after the shooting, on July 11, 2000, shortly after entering the clinic where I had my private office, a young man approached me. There was nothing unusual about his appearance until he suddenly got a vicious look on his face, stabbed me in the left flank area and then ran away.

This could have been a lethal injury, but fortunately no vital organs were seriously involved, and after six days of hospital observation I was able to return home. The physical implications were minor, but the security implications were major. After two murder attempts, all my security advisors concurred that I was at increased risk for another attack.

My family and I had to have some serious discussions about my future. The National Abortion Federation provided me with a very experienced personal security consultant. He moved into our home and lived with us for three days, talked with us, assessed my personality, visited the places that I worked in and gave me security advice. In those three days, he got to know me well. After he finished his evaluation, when I was dropping him off at the airport, his departing words to me were "Gary, you have to go back to work."

About two months after the stabbing, I returned to the practise of medicine, but with added security measures. Since the year 2000, I have restricted my practise exclusively to abortion provision.

These acts of terrorist violence have affected virtually every aspect of my and my family's life. Our lives have changed forever. I must live with security measures that I never dreamed about when I was learning how to deliver babies.

Let me tell you about an abortion patient I looked after recently. She was 18 years old, and 18-19 weeks pregnant. She came from a very strict, religious family. She was an only daughter, and had several brothers. She was East Indian Hindu and her boyfriend was East Indian Muslim, which did not please her parents. She told me if her parents found out she was pregnant she would be disowned and kicked out of the family home. She also told me that her brothers would murder her boyfriend, and I believed her. About an hour after her operation I and my nurse saw her and her boyfriend walking out of the clinic hand in hand, and I said to my nurse, "Look at that. We saved two lives today."

I love my work. I get enormous personal and professional satisfaction out of helping people, and that includes providing safe, comfortable, abortions. The people that I work with are extraordinary, and we all feel that we are doing important work, making a real difference in peoples' lives.

I can take an anxious woman, who is in the biggest trouble she has ever experiences in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life.

After an abortion operation, patients frequently say "Thank You Doctor." But abortion is the only operation I know of where they also sometimes say "Thank you for what you do."

I want to tell you one last story that I think epitomizes the satisfaction I get from my privileged work. Some years ago I spoke to a class of University of British Columbia medical students. As I left the classroom, a student followed me out. She said: "Dr. Romalis, you won't remember me, but you did an abortion on me in 1992. I am a secondyear medical student now, and if it weren't for you I wouldn't be here now.""

Að aðskilja kynþættina

Aðskilnaðarstefna er ekki eitthvað sem ekki er oft til umræðu hjá opinberum aðilum í Vestrænum samfélögum.  Slíkt hefur þó verið nokkuð fyrirferðarmikið í umræðunni hér í Toronto upp á síðkastið, bæði hjá almenningi og skólayfirvöldum. 

Hart hefur verið deilt og náðu deilurnar líklega nokkrum hápunkti í síðustu viku, þegar naumlega var samþykkt að stofna "afrocentric" framhaldsskóla, þ.e. framhaldsskóla sem eingöngu væri ætlaður þeldökkum nemendum.

Þetta hefur verið baráttumál hóps þeldökkra sem telur þetta rétta svarið við því hve hátt hlutfall þeldökkra nemenda fellur frá námi.  Aðrir sjá þetta sem ekkert annað en endurtekningu á aðskilnaðarstefnunni sem tíðkaðist á árum áður og þetta færi skólastarf áratugi aftur í tímann.

Ef til vill mætti kalla þetta "Hjallastefnu kynþáttanna", það er að segja að rökin sem sem gjarna eru lögð fram eru þau að erfiðleikar þeldökku nemendanna stafi að nokkru eða jafnvel miklu leyti af "blönduninni".

Sjálfur held ég að þetta geti verið fróðleg tilraun, en vissulega hljómar það ekki vel ef aðskilnaður kynþáttanna eykst, sérstaklega á þeim "mótunarárum" sem framhaldskólaárin eru.

En hér og hér má sjá fréttir úr Globe and Mail.

Lúxusvörur og launajöfnuður

Þegar ég sá þessa frétt rifjaðist upp fyrir mér grein sem ég las öðru hvoru megin við jólin síðustu.  Hún fjallaði um það að þó að tekjumunur væri gríðarlegur á Vesturlöndum, þá væri "jöfnuðurinn" í raun miklu meiri heldur en tölurnar gæfu til kynna og miklu minni en hann var t.d. fyrir 100 árum eða jafnvel 50.

Rökin sem hann færði fyrir þessu var ekki það að "launaskalinn" hefði skroppið saman, heldur hitt að þau "not" sem einstaklingar fengu fyrir launin sín væru frekar svipuð.

Það er að segja að "ofurtekjurnar" færu að svo miklu leyti í það að kaupa það sama og það sem "almenningur" keypti, nema hvað það væri allt svo "sérstakt", "einstakt" og "lúxushlaðið" að það kostaði mikið meira.  Notagildið væri nokk það sama, en þægindin og "upplifunin" ef til vill meiri, nota bene ef til vill.

Þannig kaupa ofurmennirnir sér Bently eða Ferrari, á með við förum milli staða á Yarisnum eð Hyundainum, en báðir skiluðu okkur á áfangastað.  Auðmennirnir ættu stærri sjónvarpskjái og dýrari farsíma, en við hinir horfðum á nokkuð sömu dagskrá og næðum í flesta sem sem við reyndum að ná sambandi við.

Sama mætti segja um fatnað, þar sem þeir á "ofurlaununum" keyptu sér lúxusmerkjavörur, en okkur hinum væri að öllu jöfnu ekki síður hlýtt.  Við yljum okkur á VSOP, en þeim efnameiri dugar ekkert minna en Loðvík XIII.

Almúginn kemst til London, Kaupmannahafnar og jafnvel Bahamaeyja eða Barbados, þó að við færum á ódýrum farrýmum, en ekki í "flötum svefnbekkjum eða einkaþotum.

Auðvitað er hér um ákveðna einföldun að ræða, en samt vel þess virði að velta þessu nokkuð fyrir sér.

Sjálfur á ég ekki von á að ég eigi nokkurn tíma eftir að smakka þennan Vintage bjór, en á meðan ég get rölt út í "ríki" og keypt mér hálfan líter af gæða tékknesku öli fyrir u.þ.b. 140 kall, þá stendur mér nokk á sama.

 

 

 

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