The Hypocrisy of Death Panels: From Grandma to Mommy
Exposing the Contrast Between Fictional ACA ‘Death Panels’ for Grandma and Today’s Real Threats to Women and Girls of Reproductive Age
Remember the uproar over supposed “death panels” during the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) debates? It started as a baseless claim by Sarah Palin and quickly gained traction through conservative media and politicians. The healthcare bill would have allowed doctors to get reimbursed for having upfront conversations with patients about their desires for end-of-life care. And, if you have ever wrestled with that gut-wrenching decision on behalf of an incapacitated loved one, you will appreciate how helpful such patient-doctor conversations would be.
This tidbit of sound medical practice became a fabricated scare tactic warning that the ACA would subject our beloved grandparents to government-mandated death panels, a myth that was thoroughly debunked. PolitiFact even declared “Death Panel” the “Lie of the Year” in 2009.
Fast forward 15 years, the irony is palpable as we face real-life implications of state-sanctioned bureaucratic meddling that threaten the lives of prospective mothers.
Drawing the comparison: Then and Now.
While the term ‘death panels’ stirred unwarranted panic during the ACA debates, even a few years ago, folks easily identified the horribleness of such thinking when Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick seemed to suggest during the COVID-19 pandemic that we should let grandma die in exchange for a better economy. He was thoroughly roasted. Yet, few have drawn the direct comparison to today’s bureaucratic and ethical struggles women face under restrictive abortion laws. In this piece, I aim to underscore the hypocrisy and the very real danger these policies pose, bridging the past political rhetoric to our present-day realities.
Case Studies: Real-Life Horror Stories
A Texas Miscarriage
Take, for example, a Texas DJ’s account of his wife’s traumatic miscarriage. After the fetus died, she was given medication to induce labor. She and her concerned husband endured two excruciating days of miscarriage at home before going to their local hospital where a doctor refused to treat her. She was forced to drive an hour away in her compromised state to another hospital. There, the doctors declined to do a D&C procedure and sent her home with more of the medicine that hadn’t worked for two days. She eventually collapsed in a pool of blood in her bathroom, where her husband found her.
Ohio’s “Ethics” Deliberation
Then consider the story of an Ohio woman going through a miscarriage. Her pregnancy teetered on the edge of Ohio’s abortion limit. One almost inconspicuous sentence in a news article summarized her plight:
She was in and out of the hospital over the next three days, including a lengthy wait for a hospital ethics panel to determine whether her preterm pregnancy could be induced without legal liability for the doctors.
Is that not the very definition of a death panel? An ethics panel focused on legal liability, not the health and wellbeing of the miscarrying woman.
These are just a few examples. There are other examples out there, such as the case of Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, who was in crisis but was never offered a therapeutic abortion that could have saved her life.
Suing for Instate Medical Treatment
Another harrowing case in Texas saw a woman needing not only hospital approval but also a district court’s permission for a medical procedure, only to have the state’s attorney general intervene.
Zurawski’s doctor said her pregnancy could not be terminated until there was no longer fetal cardiac activity or her health had deteriorated enough that the ethics board at the hospital would allow an abortion.
This woman faced a horrifying choice: risk going septic and possibly lose her chance at future pregnancies — or even her life — or travel out of state for the care she needed.
Sepsis Kills
Timely medical intervention is crucial in reducing the high mortality rate associated with sepsis. Sepsis, a severe and deadly condition, kills approximately 30% of those diagnosed. It is crucial to note that the risk of death from sepsis increases by 8% for every hour treatment is delayed. Once the person enters the severe shock stage, they have a 40 to 70% chance of dying.
Sepsis is not merely a statistic. I personally know three people who faced it within the last year — one succumbed, another barely survived a long ICU stay and now lives with lasting impairments, and a third made a full recovery after aggressive treatment. These were the outcomes for relatively healthy and active individuals. Imagine these stakes compounded by pregnancy, where the threat of sepsis, already frightening, becomes even more dire.
Real Death Panels Today
Why are state government’s forcing doctors, hospitals and their lawyers to make a decision about whether a woman is nearly dead enough for medical treatment? How does that serve a rational and legitimate interest of government?
The dissent in the 2022 Dobbs decision was incredibly prescient:
How much risk to a woman’s life can a State force her to incur, before the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of life kicks in? Suppose a patient with pulmonary hypertension has a 30-to-50 percent risk of dying with ongoing pregnancy; is that enough? And short of death, how much illness or injury can the State require her to accept, consistent with the Amendment’s protection of liberty and equality?
The Need for National Protection
Republicans have made outlawing abortion and contraception a national platform. I heard conservative candidates trying to downplay a national ban and their voting records on this issue. If you believe the disavowals that conservatives are spewing now, there’s this beautiful bridge, the likes of which no one has ever seen before, connecting California to Hawaii that I’d like to sell you. The almost 200 references to abortion in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025’s 920-page document underscore conservative’s intent to address abortion at the federal level in every possible manner that they can. The term abortion is used so often in that document that it started to sound like a vocal tic. The specter of national abortion bans only multiplies the life-threatening risks for American women. Therefore, the urgency is clear: we must stop these real death panels from propagating across the USA. Codifying Roe into national law is vital for protecting women’s 14th Amendment rights to liberty and life.
Conclusion
If you think death panels are a horrific idea, then ensure you are registered to vote and support candidates who have a track record of upholding bodily autonomy, such as those endorsed by Emily’s List. The irony is that the same party that scared you about death panels for grandma doesn’t seem to care about real death panels for women and girls of reproductive age. Let’s come together to protect the rights and lives of women and girls, and make our voices heard in the upcoming elections.
~ Karen Spencer
June, 2024
