There’s one group of people that has been strangely silent when it comes to the current War on Women, and more specifically legislation that requires women to have a state-mandated transvaginal ultrasound before an abortion. Before being allowed to practice, physicians take the hippocratic oath – a promise that they will do no harm. This politically driven policy clearly forces medical practitioners to violate that oath, since the procedure is invasive, uncomfortable, medically unnecessary, not to mention highly emotionally distressing for many women. Here, in a post that was first published on Whatever.scalzi.com, an anonymous doctor speaks out against what’s been dubbed “state-rape.” – Nicole Powers, SG Ed.

Where Is The Physician Outrage?

by An Anonymous Doctor

Right. Here.

I’m speaking, of course, about the required-transvaginal-ultrasound thing that seems to be the flavor-of-the-month in politics.

I do not care what your personal politics are. I think we can all agree that my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.

I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as “rape”. If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.

In all of the discussion and all of the outrage and all of the Doonesbury comics, I find it interesting that we physicians are relatively silent.

After all, it’s our hands that will supposedly be used to insert medical equipment (tools of HEALING, for the sake of all that is good and holy) into the vaginas of coerced women.

Fellow physicians, once again we are being used as tools to screw people over. This time, it’s the politicians who want to use us to implement their morally reprehensible legislation.

They want to use our ultrasound machines to invade women’s bodies, and they want our hands to be at the controls. Coerced and invaded women, you have a problem with that? Blame us evil doctors. We are such deliciously silent scapegoats.

It is our responsibility, as always, to protect our patients from things that would harm them. Therefore, as physicians, it is our duty to refuse to perform a medical procedure that is not medically indicated. Any medical procedure. Whatever the pseudo-justification.

It’s time for a little old-fashioned civil disobedience.
Here are a few steps we can take as physicians to protect our patients from legislation such as this.

1. Just don’t comply. No matter how much our autonomy as physicians has been eroded, we still have control of what our hands do and do not do with a transvaginal ultrasound wand. If this legislation is completely ignored by the people who are supposed to implement it, it will soon be worth less than the paper it is written on.

2. Reinforce patient autonomy. It does not matter what a politician says. A woman is in charge of determining what does and what does not go into her body. If she WANTS a transvaginal ultrasound, fine. If it’s medically indicated, fine… have that discussion with her. We have informed consent for a reason. If she has to be forced to get a transvaginal ultrasound through coercion or overly impassioned argument or implied threats of withdrawal of care, that is NOT FINE.

Our position is to recommend medically-indicated tests and treatments that have a favorable benefit-to-harm ratio… and it is up to the patient to decide what she will and will not allow. Period. Politicians do not have any role in this process. NO ONE has a role in this process but the patient and her physician. If anyone tries to get in the way of that, it is our duty to run interference.

3. If you are forced to document a non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound because of this legislation, document that the patient refused the procedure or that it was not medically indicated. (Because both of those are true.) Hell, document that you attempted but the patient kicked you in the nose, if you have to.

4. If you are forced to enter an image of the ultrasound itself into the patient chart, ultrasound the bedsheets and enter that picture with a comment of “poor acoustic window”. If you’re really gutsy, enter a comment of “poor acoustic window…plus, I’m not a rapist.” (I was going to propose repeatedly entering a single identical image in affected patient’s charts nationwide, as a recognizable visual protest…but I don’t have an ultrasound image that I own to the point that I could offer it for that purpose.)

5. Do anything else you can think of to protect your patients and the integrity of the medical profession. IN THAT ORDER. We already know how vulnerable patients can be; we invisibly protect them on a daily basis from all kinds of dangers inside and outside of the hospital. Their safety is our responsibility, and we practically kill ourselves to ensure it at all costs. But it’s also our responsibility to guard the practice of medicine from people who would hijack our tools of healing for their own political or monetary gain.

In recent years, we have been abject failures in this responsibility, and untold numbers of people have gleefully taken advantage of that. Silently allowing a politician to manipulate our medical decision-making for the purposes of an ideological goal erodes any tiny scrap of trust we might have left.

It comes down to this: When the community has failed a patient by voting an ideologue into office…When the ideologue has failed the patient by writing legislation in his own interest instead of in the patient’s…When the legislative system has failed the patient by allowing the legislation to be considered… When the government has failed the patient by allowing something like this to be signed into law… We as physicians cannot and must not fail our patients by ducking our heads and meekly doing as we’re told.

Because we are their last line of defense.

Reprinted with the kind permission of John Scalzi at Whatever.scalzi.com.

by Zach Roberts

My head hurts.

Three months after my arrest during an Occupy Wall St. protest on December 17 (see #D17 post) and two days before my meeting with the Assistant DA about said arrest – I got beaten just outside of Zuccotti Park. I wasn’t the only one, and I have no doubt I won’t be the last. Unlike the #D17 protest, this time I had press credentials. It still didn’t matter.

The NYPD has complete authority in this town – I hate using the word police state, but when I saw a girl (23-year old Cecily McMillan) thrown from a bus, in handcuffs having a seizure, tossed to the ground – I really am at a loss for any other words.

Six months ago, I was standing by the Wall Street Bull talking with journalist Allison Kilkenny complaining that this ‘Occupy Wall Street thing’ wasn’t going to last. I mean they were doing yoga in the park. It made for some great photos, but not the best images for the start of a serious movement. Now, six months later, I’m standing on the top of Zuccotti Park looking down at over 500 protestors as they started stringing up a bright yellow banner that reads “OCCUPY WALL ST.”

Well, fuck. I was wrong. Never happier to be so.

The past six months, I’ve been thrown in front of a moving police car, threatened with arrest, told to go fuck off by police, threatened by black bloc and then arrested, thrown in jail and charged with criminal trespassing.

After ten years of covering well organized protests by the corporate entities of Moveon.org and UFJP – a rag tag group of kids called Occupy Wall St. has made me lose my cynicism. Maybe one day I’ll sit down and write about how it changed me as a journalist, a photographer and as a person who gives a shit, but those things are meant to be written about long after the movement is dead. OWS is alive and well.

But the “law enforcement” that transpired as crowd gathered at Zuccotti Park on the evening of Saturday March 17 – a significant date since it marked the six month anniversary of the start of the movement’s flagship Wall Street- adjacent occupation – was different even from that of December 17 (the NYPD aren’t big on anniversaries it seems!).

This was pure fucking brutality. And it was all started by a fucking bagpipe troupe. Man, I wish I was kidding.

Out of the blue a goddamn bagpipe troupe appears at the bottom of the park, to be exact, a French bagpipe troupe from Brittany. (Yeah, I know, WTF?) The moment we see this – we all converge them – the photographers (of course) leading the way. But it seems that the police were already on to the sneaky terrorist bagpipers and had tried to put a stop to their activities. According to one officer that I asked, they objected to the rather competent public bagpipe playing due to some unspecified and vague “safety concern.” Well, like most things at OWS – the NYPD made it a safety concern – ripping the lead bagpipers bagpipe from his hands and breaking it.

The kid whose pipe got broke, no more than 19-years old, ran away from the crowd distraught and afraid. He had no fucking clue what was happening – he didn’t speak English. The police decided not to let it rest and continued to try to push the troupe out of the park, nicer than they would with OWS, but still with a heartlessness that only seems to live in the chest of the NYPD.

Then suddenly, fellow shooter CS Muncy and I turn around at the same moment to see what the plan was. The police were coming in from the other side of the park – barricades were being brought in and dozens of officers were preparing to descend. Protestors who’d been preparing all night for this eventuality were ready though, and looking for a fight. And by “looking for a fight” I mean they were peacefully sitting down, arms locked in the middle of the park singing and chanting, clearly, asking for a beating. And that’s what many of them got.

A dozen of so of the more enterprising and courageous occupiers had rolled out their secret weapon, orange netting with #OWS printed on it. They were prepared to kettle themselves. This sly mocking of police tactics commonly used against occupiers seemed to arouse contempt and the jack booted thugs moved forward en masse, batons in hand. They were going to have this park cleared for their corporate betters; the owners of Zuccotti Park, Brookfield Asset Management, had sent them their orders.

The park must be cleaned. Yes, it must be cleaned on St. Patrick’s Day in the dark. No doubt an annual tradition. (Many an online wag noted that if the protesters had been puking drunk, brawling, and wearing green, the police would have let them stay all night.)

Technically still out on my own recognizance from my previous arrest, my plan was to not do anything stupid. Well, that was before my fight or flight adrenaline started to kick in. If you follow me on twitter (@zdroberts) you know nine times out of ten I put my head down and rush in, camera in hand.

This small park made of marble and brick, once named Liberty, which has become a symbol for free speech amongst the occupiers and amongst many of us in the press, once again became “Zuccotti.” From here, it’s all down hill.

The occupiers scattered, the now zip-tied protestors who refused to leave or failed to escape laid face down on the cold brick, waiting to be dragged, walked or carried towards the top of the square where an MTA bus was waiting to carry them away (which puts a whole new spin on the phrase ‘public transit’). It would be a while before it departed though. More than enough time for those on board to see more abject cruelty and disdain on behalf of the NYPD for the pain of the arrested protestors.

I saw a protestor, no more than 115 pounds picked up by two cops and chucked face down into a pile of other arrestees – she was 4 feet in the air when they launched her. I saw two officers, one female, pick up a metal barricade and slam it into a crowd of people that included protestors, myself and The Guardian’s Laurie Penny (a.k.a. @PennyRed). The female officer seemed to have it in for Penny. I saw several protesters who dared to stand up, quickly tackled and kneed in the back – many of them women half the size of the officers kneeling on their spines.

I saw a girl all in green tossed then dropped out of the doorway of the bus that they’d tried to place her on until she started having a seizure. Cameras and livestreamers documented it. Here’s one of the photos I took:

I can tell you from being there that there wasn’t a single police officer with a look of concern on their face as she continued having a seizure on the cold pavement of Broadway. It took 15 minutes for a ambulance to arrive. I’m told 5 minutes is the usual response time in this part of town.

Sometimes I forget, this is Commissioner Ray Kelly’s city, we’re just tenants here. There was no ambulance needed for me. I was lucky… or maybe just stupid.

After the second cleansing of Zuccotti Park (see my previous report of the first), the police continued their pushback under the guise of ‘safety concerns’ – basically a standard fallback excuse / tactic to keep protesters and journalists from being allowed to witness brutality and arrests, which also provides the NYPD with a premise (however flimsy) to disperse a law abiding crowd from places they should be within their rights to gather.

It works quite well, that is until it doesn’t. The thing is, when you’re pushing back with billy clubs and metal barricades, sometimes people can’t move back quick enough. Or sometimes, people refuse to move from a public sidewalk. Well as a photographer, I get caught in the middle quite often – usually I’m deft enough to get out of the way – this time I wasn’t.

I fell back, and while trying to get up there was another push from the police. They saw me fall, mind you. Just didn’t care.

Two or three people made it over me without falling as well, using me as their sidewalk (they didn’t have any other choice). Then came the rush and four or five people fell on top of me. The police kept pushing. Then came the batons. I couldn’t see if the people that were on top of me previously got hit at all, but I certainly did – twice to the back and once on the head.

I’m not quite sure what the logic is of literally beating a man when he’s down. But once he saw that his baton beating wasn’t getting me going he decided to try to pick me up by my hair. That didn’t work either – but by then I was up enough to get my footing under me as I continued screaming “PRESS!!! PRESS!!!” That was enough to get the beating to stop – but I still was pushed/thrown back into the crowd, again almost losing my footing as I had to leap over a pile of garbage into the street. Being in the street was of course a crime itself, so I was once again thrown back on the sidewalk.

Press tags nearly torn off, bag strap messed up, I staggered out of the crowd towards the stoop of a building (somewhat ironically a Starbucks). Checking my bag and camera for any serious damage and not finding any, I then looked over myself. No visible bruises, it seemed to be a miracle I came out somehow unscathed. It wasn’t until I got back to the office that I found the growing welt on the side of my head like some Looney Toons character that had just been hit by an anvil.

Once I caught my breath, I called my office, reported in, told them what happened. My boss, investigative journalist Greg Palast, and his chief investigatrix Badpenny tried to get me to come in and file the photos. I told them, no, I had to see this out to the end. I was pissed and I wasn’t going to let them get away with anything else; it was nearing the time when the press goes home to file before the papers are put to bed, a phenomenon the NYPD is all to familiar with since they know at this point any action is done out of the glare of the bulk of the mainstream media. Also I knew that the occupiers wouldn’t let this rest, this night wasn’t over just because they lost the park.

This is New York City, there are many parks – Union Square in fact was only a quick 20 blocks away. It was 3 AM, the weather was nice, the streets were clear from traffic and the cops were busy elsewhere. Perfect time for a run straight up Broadway. And so we did running on the sidewalk and running in the street.

“WHO’S STREET??!!! OUR STREET!!! OFF THE SIDEWALKS AND INTO THE STREET!!!”

NEXT: The taking of Union Square…and how I nearly got killed by the OWS Library.

Zach D Roberts is a photo-journalist for SuicideGirls.com, TheMudFlats.net and for GregPalast.com. He is currently working on a photo-essay book with an intro by Greg Palast which can be pre-ordered here which compiles the photos/stories seen on SuicideGirls, TheMudflats, GregPalast.com – and much more.

Related Posts
The Essential Gear Guide For The Occupy Journalist
#D17 – Sitting on the Group W Bench – Arrested for Committing Journalism
Occupy Wall Street: The Cleansing of Zuccotti Park

More images after the jump.

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by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman)

Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World…

By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.

Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.

When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.

(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)

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by Alex Dueben

Brian K. Vaughan his made his name as one of the best comics writers of the twenty-first century. He created two long running series, the science fiction fable Y–The Last Man and the political superhero tale Ex Machina. Vaughan also created the series Runaways for Marvel and wrote the series’ best issues, wrote the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad based on the true story of lions who escaped from the Baghdad zoo. and wrote a story arc for the Season 9 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Dark Horse Comics and Joss Whedon that featured Faith.

Outside of comics, he’s been known for joining the writing staff of Lost during the third season. He worked on the show through the fifth season and is currently adapting Stephen King’s novel Under the Dome for Showtime.

His new project is Saga, an ongoing series coming out from Image Comics. Illustrated by Fiona Staples, the book is about a Romeo and Juliet-esque couple from opposite sides of an interstellar war. A blend of fantasy and science fiction elements, there are creatures with wings, horned aliens, ray guns and swords, spaceships and childbirth, bounty hunters, rocketship forests, cats that can tell if you’re lying, and a healthy dose of sex and violence. We reached Vaughan by e-mail.

Read our exclusive interview with Brian K. Vaughan on SuicideGirls.com.

by Blogbot

This Sunday (March 25) on SuicideGirls Radio we’ll be talking nerdy and getting the skinny on the best ways to find love online. Co-hosts Nicole Powers (SG’s Managing Editor) and Darrah de jour (SG’s Red, White and Femme columnist and resident sensuality expert), will be joined in-studio by lifecaster, SG contributor, and computer dating expert Jen Friel and her co-hort Jenn Hoffman, a writer, blogger, entertainer and entrepreneur. The pair can be seen performing together in The Dirty Truth About Nerdy Girls stage show, which chronicles their hilarious adventures while looking for Mr. Right (and Mr. Right Now) on OKCupid.

Tune in to the world’s leading naked radio show for two hours of totally awesome tunes and extreme conversation – and don’t let yo momma listen in!

Listen to SG Radio live Sunday night from 10 PM til Midnight PST on SuicideGirlsRadio.Indie1031.com/

And follow us on Twitter because we like cyberstalkers.

Join Jen Friel, Jenn Hoffman and friends for the Talk Nerdy To Me, Lover live stage show, The Dirty Truth About Nerdy Girls, on Friday, March 23 at 9:30 PM at The Little Modern Theater in Hollywood, CA. For more info visit: talknerdytomelover.com/stage-show/

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Emanuelle Suicide in Playground Love

• MAKES ME HAPPY: My cat, the rain, swing dance, Star Wars.
• MAKES ME SAD: Summer and winter.

Get to know Emanuelle better over at SuicideGirls.com!