Texas (Forcing Children to Have Babies Edition … Yes, Really)

I need to make a point of something I passed over in the last post.

Can we run the lede from Dana Liebelson of HuffPo again, please?

Texas House lawmakers are expected to consider a measure as early as Wednesday that could be used to protect child welfare service providers who want to force kids into discredited gay conversion therapy programs. The bill also protects providers who deny minors access to birth control or abortions.

And, you know, the fight over reparative therapy is important not just for its stakes but because it is a symbol of how far these people are willing to go.

But that last?

The bill also protects providers who deny minors access to birth control or abortions.

Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

Let me say this plainly: Protecting those who force children to carry pregnancies.

What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

And, look, we can make whatever joke about the fact that it’s Texas, but the question remains: What the hell is wrong with these people? As a human condition, what under the sun and moon and stars has gone awry in these people? Even as a symbol of how far they are willing to go, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

____________________

Liebelson, Dana. “Texas Bill Could Protect Welfare Providers Who Force Kids Into Gay Conversion Therapy”. The Huffington Post. 13 May 2015.

Good News with an Asterisk

This is important:

The largest group of internal medicine doctors in the U.S. came out Monday in support of policies it says will improve the health of the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

Those policies include support for civil marriage rights for same-sex couples, opposition to so-called conversion or reparative therapy and support for health insurance plans that include comprehensive transgender healthcare services.

“The LGBT community deserves the same high quality care that any community in the United States should be getting, but may not be getting,” said Dr. Wayne J. Riley, president of the American College of Physicians.

(Seaman)

This is the challenge: Prevention and risk identification. The Reuters report notes, for instance, that among the estimated 1.1 million HIV cases in the United States, one in six is not yet diagnosed. And think about that for a moment; that nearly seventeen percent works out to nearly one hundred eighty-four thousand people with unknown transmission potential likely in high risk profiles.

And this is a problem. First and foremost, doctors need to know these patients in order to help. But as a practical concern, this number also represents a tremendous gateway for potential further undiagnosed exposure, transmission, and contraction. Both individual and public health are at risk.