Something fishy

The premature death of the Burdett Birth Center is not just a broken promise, it is an abject example of short-sightedness.

Breathed into life as a compromise, the stand-alone obstetrics and gynecologic facility was the product of the 2011 merger of Samaritan – the last secular hospital in Rensselaer County – with the religiously-affiliated hospital conglomerate St. Peter’s Health Partners. In addition to offering prenatal and birth services in Rensselaer County, in a stand-alone space, the Burdett Center vowed to offer preventive reproductive care unaligned with the Catholic doctrines of its parent company.

Somehow that promise only lived for a decade, and only on a single floor of the center’s facilities. It reneged altogether two years ago, when, citing the economic hardships of the pandemic, Burdett officials "reabsorbed" the floor into the operations of the remainder of the facility.

It seemed it was a viability issue, then as well. 

They just couldn’t afford to ensure women had access to some reproductive health services. Especially, it would seem, the ones that didn't align with the church. 

And now, Burdett can’t afford to supply any of its clinical services to the community, including the urban and rural folks we know to be medically underserved, and for whom traveling longer distances for appropriate care is a burden. 

Perhaps nothing can prove the failure of profit-driven care more than the disappearance of birthing centers like Burdette.

As we crest the first anniversary of Dobbs, a decision that holds that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; and that precedents Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey are overruled, we are in nothing short of chaos. 

Patients are having to travel, placing strain on the healthcare system.

Doctors are now worried about being prosecuted for performing critical and necessary care.

People in need of miscarriage treatment are being turned away from hospitals until they get sick enough to warrant life-saving care.

The courts, out of ideological hubris, have imperiled the Federal Government’s ability to regulate prescription drugs, like mifepristone, creating panic for women and providers in states that have codified a woman's right to care.

And it will only get worse.

Dobbs will mean fewer doctors to care for pregnant patients. Fewer doctors mean worse health outcomes for women and families.

Women will suffer even in states that have professed a commitment to better health outcomes. We can already see it in our own backyard.

We can’t prioritize live birth without prioritizing their mothers.

When will we deliver on those promises?

Maybe never.

Last week we also learned another member of the Supreme Court has shown himself to be an unethical rube. A photograph at the top of the story showed Samuel Alito, flanked by his moneyed friends, smiling for the camera as he held up a trophy catch. 

ProPublica was reporting the justice took substantial gifts from people who had business before the court and had not reported them on his financial disclosures. The piece laid out the timeline of an Alaskan fishing trip gifted to Alito and paid for by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer.

But before that report was filed, Alito busied himself by writing off these perceived moral and ethical shortcomings in an OpEd for the Wall Street Journal. Certain the important people would understand that a Supreme who is so fervent in his conservative beliefs can’t be corrupted by the equally conservative friends who, as it seems, keep him. 

He believes a person would have to be unreasonable and biased to doubt his impartiality in cases where other federal workers would be required to recuse themselves.

Furthermore, it seems from the reporting, Alito is just another high court judge who doesn’t think laws apply to him but who remains unequivocally sure that the Constitution does not protect women’s right to decide their own health care.

He can not conceive of how reproductive healthcare connects with the founders’ three stated declarations of inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And that he’s entitled to the gift of a luxury fishing trip from a person with business before the court because “a seat, (on the private jet) that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.” 

It sounds more like the reasoning of a petulant child than a justice on the highest court of the land. 

The short-sightedness of our leaders in justice and health shouldn’t be so surprising. Yet here we are.