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turbinetree

(24,703 posts)
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 04:03 PM Aug 2018

Kavanaugh Thinks It's OK to Perform Elective Surgery on People Without Consent

BY
Hannah LeibsonRebecca Cokley TalkPoverty.org
PUBLISHED
August 13, 2018

This article was published by TalkPoverty.org.

Right now, Congress is in a deadlock over Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Senators are reviewing more than 1 million pages of his legal writing — which have laid out his stance on women’s reproductive rights (opposed), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (opposed), and the Affordable Care Act (opposed) — and members are battling over access to additional documentation that could reveal past experience with torture and wiretapping. While many of Kavanaugh’s opinions have been controversial — in particular his dissent from a decision that allowed an immigrant woman to have an abortion — one of his most problematic rulings has gone unreported. As a Judge in DC Circuit Court, Kavanaugh argued that people with disabilities could be forced to undergo elective surgeries, including abortion, without their consent.

In 2001, three intellectually disabled DC residents brought suit against the city in Doe ex rel. Tarlow v. D.C, after they were subjected to at least three involuntary procedures: two abortions and one elective eye surgery. Ultimately, the district court agreed that these women’s due process rights had been violated and that “constitutionally adequate procedures” had not been followed. The District Court ruled for the plaintiffs and held that DC must make “documented reasonable efforts to communicate” with patients and if unsuccessful, the government had to take into account the “totality of circumstances” before proceeding to ensure any decision is in the best interest of the patient. This decision codified patients’ right to self-determination, and struck down the practice of elective
surgeries without consent from the patients at stake.

On appeal, Judge Kavanaugh vacated the District Court’s injunction, arguing that “accepting the wishes of patients who lack, and have always lacked the mental capacity to make medical decisions does not make logical sense.” That stands in contrast to even the most conservative interpretations of the laws that existed at the time, which required two separate health professionals to determine whether a patient had the capacity to make medical decisions before every procedure. The lifetime pass Kavanaugh seems to be arguing for, which would allow doctors to perform any procedures they wanted on a person who was once ruled unfit, does not exist.

One hundred years ago, Kavanaugh’s ruling would have been at home on the Supreme Court. In the 1920’s, in the famous 8-1 ruling of Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court found a Virginia statute that allowed for the sexual sterilization of a third generation, “feebleminded” women was constitutional because “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

https://truthout.org/articles/kavanaugh-thinks-its-ok-to-perform-elective-surgery-on-people-without-consent/


So this Federalists Society asshole basically believes in eugenics.....................and the list of his bull shit keeps getting longer and longer, now what is Grassley and the fucking turtle going to do..................are they for eugenics.................


November 2018 cannot get here fast enough..........................vote

26 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Kavanaugh Thinks It's OK to Perform Elective Surgery on People Without Consent (Original Post) turbinetree Aug 2018 OP
This has to get out far and wide. RandySF Aug 2018 #1
Weird Matthew28 Aug 2018 #2
probably considers eye surgery the price he has to pay for abortions, sterilizations, & lobotomies. unblock Aug 2018 #5
he seems handmade34 Aug 2018 #3
Where are all the "right to lifer's" now? CrispyQ Aug 2018 #4
Where's the pro lifers Matthew28 Aug 2018 #6
Well, that's the thing: volstork Aug 2018 #13
So the Senators should bring this up greymattermom Aug 2018 #16
That would be an excellent question! CrispyQ Aug 2018 #20
Good question. ck4829 Aug 2018 #25
He is also Pro-Choice. Just not the choice of the woman. Maraya1969 Aug 2018 #7
The First Thing That Came To My Mind Was Eugenics Me. Aug 2018 #8
Like sewing a certain person's mouth shut? C_U_L8R Aug 2018 #9
A little judicial history: Buck v Bell no_hypocrisy Aug 2018 #10
Wado------------Thank you turbinetree Aug 2018 #19
I didn't know this. CrispyQ Aug 2018 #21
Tragedy. Thank you for posting this. Hortensis Aug 2018 #24
Connecticut had at least one of those homes for the "feeble-minded" kskiska Aug 2018 #11
Wow. I mean, I don't even know how to respond to such a viewpoint as Kavanaugh's. Honeycombe8 Aug 2018 #12
Forced sterilizations used to be fairly common... Hekate Aug 2018 #14
If govt can ban abortions, they can force abortions. Ilsa Aug 2018 #15
Discrimination and Eugenics barbarity continue.. appalachiablue Aug 2018 #17
Another REPUGnant Position from Plantation Master Kavanaugh stuffmatters Aug 2018 #18
Ha! progressoid Aug 2018 #22
Sooooo, he's not really pro-life or anti-abortion. smirkymonkey Aug 2018 #23
Did this topic of forced abortion arise during the hearings? lostnfound Oct 2018 #26

unblock

(52,243 posts)
5. probably considers eye surgery the price he has to pay for abortions, sterilizations, & lobotomies.
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 04:17 PM
Aug 2018

CrispyQ

(36,478 posts)
4. Where are all the "right to lifer's" now?
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 04:15 PM
Aug 2018

"...Kavanaugh argued that people with disabilities could be forced to undergo elective surgeries, including abortion, without their consent."

What a despicable POS. These people are genuinely terrifying in their total lack of empathy & sense of superiority.

Matthew28

(1,798 posts)
6. Where's the pro lifers
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 04:21 PM
Aug 2018

He is pretty much admitting that he wants to perform abortions on disabled people.

volstork

(5,401 posts)
13. Well, that's the thing:
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 05:37 PM
Aug 2018

If you are able to ban abortion (or anything else, for that matter), then you also have the power to compel it. Who says they won't turn around and compel women they find "inappropriate" to abort...

greymattermom

(5,754 posts)
16. So the Senators should bring this up
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 06:16 PM
Aug 2018

and ask him exactly what IQ you need to keep the government for forcing you to have an abortion against your will.

CrispyQ

(36,478 posts)
20. That would be an excellent question!
Tue Aug 14, 2018, 10:26 AM
Aug 2018
And I think Kamala Harris would be the perfect senator to ask it. It's gotta be a woman.

no_hypocrisy

(46,117 posts)
10. A little judicial history: Buck v Bell
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 04:46 PM
Aug 2018

In the 1920s, states sterilized people against their will and/or without their knowledge based on eugenics. To keep the wrong kind of people from having children and polluting the population.

Right now, I'm in Amherst County in Virginia where the case started. The woman was in foster care where she was raped and had a child. Social services considered her promiscuous for being single and poor (you know, white trash). Carrie Buck fought for her right NOT to be sterilized all the way up to the Supreme Court where Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. dropped the ball and gave his blessing to state-sponsored sterilization, albeit compulsory.

And my friends, THIS LAW IS STILL VIABLE AND COULD BE USED AGAIN on anyone the federal or state government deems "unhealthy" to have a child. Think of it as reverse abortion.

Here's the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

CrispyQ

(36,478 posts)
21. I didn't know this.
Tue Aug 14, 2018, 10:32 AM
Aug 2018

What a tragic story. And again, a group of men making policy/legislation over women's bodies. I am so sick of this shit.

Thank you for posting.

Hortensis

(58,785 posts)
24. Tragedy. Thank you for posting this.
Tue Aug 14, 2018, 04:32 PM
Aug 2018

In Los Angeles 35 years ago now, a conservative neighbor and friend told me she watched in a large medical center while a woman who clearly did not understand (ESL problem) consented to sterilization. Learning that my neighbor watched and did not intervene, or merely claimed to have watched and done nothing (although I did believe her), began the end of our friendship. I'd detected no malice before that, but calm acceptance in an intelligent woman was a literally stunning eye opener.

It really could become institutionalized here. But not if we get control of congress in 83 days.


kskiska

(27,045 posts)
11. Connecticut had at least one of those homes for the "feeble-minded"
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 05:13 PM
Aug 2018

and I knew of a family in town who had members that had been sterilized there.

Honeycombe8

(37,648 posts)
12. Wow. I mean, I don't even know how to respond to such a viewpoint as Kavanaugh's.
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 05:18 PM
Aug 2018

I get the point that the person doesn't have the mental capacity to make decisions. But the lower court decided, it sounds like (w/o reading the decision) , that the rules in place for such situations had not been followed.

Did the woman not have family or someone have power of attorney to make such decisions for her? Just as with a child, there is someone appointed to make those decisions for a person who is incapable of making those decisions.

But wow...to decide just to do whatever..blows my mind.

Hekate

(90,714 posts)
14. Forced sterilizations used to be fairly common...
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 06:10 PM
Aug 2018

Fifty years ago I knew a woman it had been done to. Her parents committed her to a mental institution when she was an adolescent (probably behavioral problems, defiance, that kind of thing) and looking back all I can say is she was damn lucky she wasn't lobotomized like Rosemary Kennedy's daughter.

Anyway, some decades later my first mother in law sprang her and found her a job. My first MIL was a state psychologist -- she just recognized that this woman, and a few other people, simply did not belong there. When I met her she was probably in her 50s, had some weird behaviors from being institutionalized, but certainly was sane.

We can do better.

Ilsa

(61,695 posts)
15. If govt can ban abortions, they can force abortions.
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 06:13 PM
Aug 2018

Why aren't the anti-choice hypocrites volunteering to manage these pregnancies and adopt these babies?

On a personal note, I don't think childbirth is anything other than terrifying and traumatizing for someone with serious cognitive disabilities.

stuffmatters

(2,574 posts)
18. Another REPUGnant Position from Plantation Master Kavanaugh
Mon Aug 13, 2018, 06:52 PM
Aug 2018

Zero surprise that Kavanaugh champions eugenics. And the Repug Party has employed, loved, respected this
judicial sociopath for decades.

 

smirkymonkey

(63,221 posts)
23. Sooooo, he's not really pro-life or anti-abortion.
Tue Aug 14, 2018, 04:23 PM
Aug 2018

He's only against letting women have a choice over whether or not to give birth. If you are white and healthy then you will be forced to have the child, if you are disabled or "feeble-minded" you are forced into an unwanted abortion. What a hypocrite. He is a sick, sadistic POS.

lostnfound

(16,180 posts)
26. Did this topic of forced abortion arise during the hearings?
Sun Oct 7, 2018, 12:56 PM
Oct 2018

Seems reminiscent of the case in Florida where the state under Jeb Bush was keeping a brain dead woman (Terri Schiavo) alive against the wishes of her spouse.

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