Woman Who Sued Coburn Goes Public

[RedEarth]

TULSA, Sept. 16 -- A woman who claimed in a lawsuit 13 years ago that the Republican Senate candidate here, a family physician, sterilized her without her consent came forward Thursday to stand by her story, throwing one of the most competitive Senate races in the country into further turmoil.

Her voice shaking at times, Angela Plummer said that while Tom Coburn saved her life during a 1990 surgery to remove a fallopian tube in which a fetus had lodged, she was "stunned" to learn that he had also removed her remaining good tube.


"Dr. Tom Coburn sterilized me without my consent -- verbal or written -- and I know he's stating that he got oral consent. That is not true," Plummer said at a news conference. "I'm not up here to smear him. I'm up here because I wanted to have more children, and he took that away from me."

Coburn is embroiled in a tight race with Rep. Brad Carson (D), and the conservative Muskogee doctor has accused Democrats of leaking the story to "trash" his character. Plummer said Thursday that she had not spoken to anyone with partisan interests but came forward after she had read the initial article about the sterilization on Salon.com earlier in the week.

The race is considered one the most critical in the country as both parties fight for control of the U.S. Senate. A spokesman for Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Thursday that the senator was scheduled to visit Oklahoma to campaign for Coburn on Friday. Vice President Cheney is due here next week on Coburn's behalf. The story has dominated the local news this week, with national Democrats jumping into the fray. Polls show the race is a dead heat.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27269-2004Sep16.html

[WI_DEM]

1. No wonder the republicans want to put a cap on malpractice

so they can protect their candidates.

I'm glad she came forward along with the allegations of Medicare fraud I hope this guy will be history.

[Catfight]

5. So very true. How can America allow the Republican party to thrive

with this sort of nazi behavior?

[daleo]

2. Would he be one of the doctors that was showing his love for women

According to Bush?

[SarahB]

3. Another example apparently...

Of a Republican male thinking they can decide the future of a woman's reproductive choices. Sometimes in tubal pregnancies, one fallopian tube is lost, but there's no reason the other healthy, fallopian tupe would need to be removed. I hope she did sue and got damages. She could probably conceive in the future through in vitro fertilization, but that's expensive.

[yellowcanine]

4. Is Frist going to condone sterilization without written consent?

Will reporters ask Frist that question? And wasn't this woman only 20 years old at the time, making it unethical for the doctor to sterilize her even with her consent?

[Radius]

6. 2 sides

Snip
On Wednesday, Coburn said that he removed the other tube because the patient had asked him to do so several times previously and because her mother had also requested that it be done that night. (Plummer confirmed that her mother had done so, in an interview with the Tulsa World.) Coburn's campaign released a statement Thursday from a nurse who stated that Plummer had "begged" him to remove the other tube.
/snip.

I do not like dirty politics, on either side. A fair look at all the facts is important.

[GoldenOldie]

8. Dr Cat killer, Frist aka HMO family

comes to the aide of another fellow physician Neocon. Along with Cheney Halliburton. Ain't it nice to have friends.

[noamnety]

9. Because her MOTHER asked him to?

Wasn't the woman an adult already?

Am I missing something here?

And if it had been discussed previously, why wouldn't there have been written consent - I could understand if he put her under, then realized that was her only hope of survival. But a procedure that was agreed to ahead of time would have been written up.

[yellowcanine]

10. "begged" does not cut it. Without written consent a surgeon dare not

sterilize a woman. And there is still the matter of Medicaid fraud. N believe Medicaid does not pay for sterilizations for women less than 21 years old - the woman was 20 at the time?

[w4rma]

11. Docs don't mess around with sterilization without WRITTEN consent.

This doc did. This doctor sterilized this woman without her consent and against her will.

[murielm99]

13. When my husband got a vasectomy, the doc talked to

BOTH of us.

He had to sign a consent form. The doctor told him to be sure it was what he wanted. The doctor did not try to discourage him, he just wanted to make sure.

I have several friends who have had tubal ligations. They signed consent forms, too.

I don't think it would have mattered if anyone else had begged the doc one way or the other. He was not going to move without that written consent.

If this was not a matter of life or death, someone really should have investigated and sued.

[Lerkfish]

12. operations cannot be performed without written consent...

where I come from...where do you live that it is different?

[ButterflyBlood]

7. excellent

this is a tight race, anything to hurt Coburn. Carson may be a conservative Democrat, but he's infinately superior to a nutcase like Coburn.

[Kilroy003]

14. Eugenics anyone?

Sick.