–by Sebastian
I realize that the UK has different ideas about free speech than the US. So it doesn’t come as a complete shock to me that someone might be jailed for a month for sending allegedly offensive pictures of aborted fetuses to hospital staff. (I presume that katherine wouldn’t be thrown in jail for sending pictures of torture victims to Gitmo) But look what else happened:
Ms. May said she received an envelope of “very upsetting and offensive literature” and became tearful when she told the Press, “It is upsetting for everyone. I believe people who work for the NHS, and particularly at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, are passionate about providing excellent care for their patients.”
Since the court case, Mr. Atkinson has been removed from the hospital’s wait list for an evaluation for hip surgery and has been banned from anything other than life-saving treatment as a punishment for his activism. A hospital spokesman said he had broken its “zero tolerance” policy by ignoring its warnings to stop. Hospital staff said they were upset and “quite disturbed’ by the images.
The hospital said, “We exercised our right to decline treatment for anything other than life-threatening conditions.”
As reported by the TimesOnline:
Mr Atkinson sounds like an unpleasant crank, and I am as much in favour of legalised abortion as he is against it. But his treatment (or the lack of it) is a scandal. This is about admitting a man to hospital, not electing him to Parliament. Even unhip old bigots need replacement hips.
Ruth May, the hospital’s chief executive, claims that the ban is justified because the “offensive” publications he mailed caused “great distress” to her and her staff and thus contravened the NHS policy of “zero tolerance”. Some may already feel that such policies make it seem as if a hospital’s priority is to protect its staff against the patients, rather than protecting patients from illness. This case goes farther, equating the posting of offensive photos with punching a nurse on the nose.
Why on earth should hospitals be distressed by pictures of the sort of operations that they carry out? An aborted late-term foetus can certainly make a grisly spectacle, and there is no point trying to sanitise abortion. But neither need anybody be intimidated by the handful of zealots who like to wave around such bloody abortion porn.
That sounds very close to government health care discrimination based on the political viewpoint of the patient. I’m not comfortable with punishing him at all for free speech, but I’m really appalled that the hospital thinks political viewpoint discrimination regarding health care treatment is ok.
I am 100% certain that this story is mostly fiction created by the anti-choice site you pulled it from.
It is not worth discussing, and not worth having up, without some credible source providing solid information.
Anti-choice sites are known to mislead and misrepresent this kind of thing all the time.
I presume that katherine wouldn’t be thrown in jail for sending pictures of torture victims to Gitmo
Sorry for the small ‘jack, but as a matter of fact you can get in big trouble for sending pictures of torture victims to Gitmo. And some folks are in that trouble.
Agree completely on the impropriety of denying medical care on account of boorish behavior.
It appears that he also got 28 days.
How is criminally harassing medical staff a valid political statement?
…to add, would he have gotten his hip replacement if demurred from sending photos via the mail?
Yes. And his political beliefs would remain the same.
He’s being punished for bad behaviour, not beliefs.
“It is not worth discussing, and not worth having up, without some credible source providing solid information.”
I would normally think that The TimesOnline counted as a credible source. I linked to that.
Use GoogleNews with “Edward Atkinson” as the search term. You will find articles in the same vein from the National Post, The Mirror, The Scotsman, and the Norfolk Eastern Daily Press.
“How is criminally harassing medical staff a valid political statement?”
He posted pictures of aborted fetuses. Annoying. Sure. Criminally harassing? Perhaps in the UK. Worth having your medical care withdrawn? I don’t think so.
Query for British readers, are prisoners regularly removed from the lists for medical care?
Criminal harassment or not I have to agree with Sebastian on this one. Slippery slope. I’m not sure what I would suggest as preventive measures against him sending additional materials, but not treating him is wrong.
I don’t doubt that the “zero tolerance” policy applies equally to people who insult and grope and stalk the staff, and I suppose folks like that have probably been refused treatments as well, but plain old 28 days in jail seems like the right way to deal with this. And if that’s not enough then another 28.
Going to have to agree here. While anti-choice groups and sites (as well as their counterparts in the school prayer/anti-evolution movements) have an established and well-earned reputation for making up crap like this out of whole cloth to bolster their cause, I recall reading about this and think it’s probably accurate.
Here’s the central question: when is it acceptable for a hospital to deny entry or treatment to someone?
At one extreme, I think it’s probably justifiable to deny treatment to someone who has repeatedly threatened and physically assaulted people at the hospital, and who otherwise poses a danger to the staff or other patients.
At the other end, it’s clearly not okay for a hospital to deny someone because they don’t like the way they look or the opinions they express in the outside world.
So where do you draw the line between a patient’s right to treatment and a facility’s right to protect its staff?
Here’s the central question: when is it acceptable for a hospital to deny entry or treatment to someone?
To many anti-choicers, it’s acceptable for a hospital to deny a woman necessary health care, and even to refuse to tell a woman where she can receive the health care she needs.
That sounds very close to government health care discrimination based on the political viewpoint of the patient.
Rubbish. Edward Atkinson was not jailed or fined or denied treatment based on his political views. He was jailed and fined for sending malicious communications (see Malicious Communications Act 1988, after ignoring several warnings to desist his abusive messages to hospital staff. He was denied treatment at that hospital because he had been criminally abusive to staff at that hospital.
Had he simply stood outside the hospital quietly handing out leaflets, a form of protest wholly legal in the UK, he would never have been fined, jailed, or denied treatment.
I’m with Sebastian. Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that his behavior is so bad that he should be punished for it. Then the appropriate punishment would be to send him to jail, or fine him, or whatever; not to deprive him of medical care. And in fact most codes of medical ethics that I’m familiar with say that your views of a patient are irrelevant to your obligation to treat that patient. When people object to this at all, the objection is usually of the form: but do you have an obligation to treat Hitler if he’s been admitted to your hospital? The question ‘Do you have an obligation to treat some cantankerous old coot?’ is generally taken to be settled in the affirmative.
If I disagree with the war in Iraq, and I send graphic pictures of dead Iraqi children to the families of US servicepeople, I think they would be quite justified morally and legally in procuring a restraining order.
Hip replacement is also for comfort and not for the preservation of life (with the information about this particular individual at hand).
but do you have an obligation to treat Hitler if he’s been admitted to your hospital?
Was Hitler harassing the staff?
Think I agree with Jes here.
Sebastian: you link to an op-ed, here is the link to the article from times online.
I’ve not read a lot about it (and will not start now, it is way past bedtime here), but as I understood it he sent the pictures to administrative staff, not nurses and such, and continued after being warned not to do it anymore. The article I read has allready moved to the paid archives unfortunately.
And Jes: “To many anti-choicers, it’s acceptable for a hospital to deny a woman necessary health care, and even to refuse to tell a woman where she can receive the health care she needs.”
This is wrong, and it remains wrong even people I agree with do something similar to someone who thinks it’s justified.
If the hospital got a restraining order, again, that would be different. It’s denying treatment in particular for these sorts of reasons that’s wrong.
The reason why medical ethics codes generally come down this way is that they were worked out over a long period, in which doctors had to answer questions like: do you have to treat wounded enemy soldiers on a battlefield? Can you deny someone treatment because he insulted you? Because he voted for a candidate you find objectionable? Because you don’t like e.g. his skin color or sexual orientation? In general, the answer that took hold was: you’re a doctor first, and your personal views about the merits of your patients are subordinated to that.
(Thus the question about Hitler: the point there is not that he’s so very objectionable, but that the world might be better off if he were allowed to die. It’s closer to the question: would it ever be OK to kill someone for the greater good? in which, again, Hitler tends to put in an appearance.)
Hilzoy: I’m with Sebastian. Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that his behavior is so bad that he should be punished for it. Then the appropriate punishment would be to send him to jail, or fine him, or whatever; not to deprive him of medical care.
Hilzoy, if a student has a habit of walking into your office and shouting offensive abuse at you including threats of violence, for which habit the student is eventually banned from campus by the university, would you personally feel you had an obligation to make sure that the student managed to take their exams/do substitute work so that they didn’t fail their course because they’d been banned from campus? Since, after all, the student wouldn’t have been banned if they hadn’t been in the habit of shouting violent abuse at you?
Dutchmarbel, that news article was written before the hospital denied him treatment.
Jesurgislac, is it common practice to deny criminals treatment after their time has been served? Or even while it is being served? I hadn’t gotten the impression that denying medical service was part of the UK prison ideal.
“Hilzoy, if a student has a habit of walking into your office and shouting offensive abuse at you including threats of violence”
Jesurgislac, do you have evidence of threats of violence? If not, do you believe that the threats of violence are important to your hypothetical?
If the hospital got a restraining order, again, that would be different. It’s denying treatment in particular for these sorts of reasons that’s wrong.
I’m sorry, I’m missing something. The hospital is denying this man treatment – except in emergencies – because he has been criminally abusive to hospital staff. You’re saying it would be different if the hospital got a restraining order? How would it be different?
“Jesurgislac, is it common practice to deny criminals treatment after their time has been served? Or even while it is being served? I hadn’t gotten the impression that denying medical service was part of the UK prison ideal.”
I had thought the question was about a particular hospital, not any hospital. Or are you asserting a right to be treated at a particular hospital?
Sebastian: Jesurgislac, do you have evidence of threats of violence? If not, do you believe that the threats of violence are important to your hypothetical?
I confess, I was trying to imagine what would get someone found guilty of criminal speech in the US, since apparently merely sending hate mail is “free speech”.
Interesting question. It is important to note that the hospital was still would have treated him had it been “life-threatening conditions” according to the links Sebastian gave. It is also unclear what precisely was sent. If he had sent a picture list titled ‘hit list’, thereby making the implication that certain staff members were targeted, I think that all of us would agree that he should only be treated if he gets wheeled in unconscious. My question would be did the materials create an implication that staff members were ‘targeted’ in some way? If so, I think they were well within their rights to refuse to accept him.
How about if student X had plagiarized prof Y’s work?
I have a hard time getting even a little worked up over it. Maybe it’s just that I feel tired of defending the rights of jerks who’d never return the favor. Let someone less distracted or more dedicated than me take up the cause, and I would contribute to their costs. (In fact, I do that now.)
But I refuse to feel any concern at all that someone who set out to rouse strong emotions succeeded in doing so and then found that he didn’t like the result. That’s his own damn fault, pretty much. At this stage in my life, I find my sympathy going toward those who’re making at least a token effort not to destroy the sort of society I want to live in, the kind of values that my parents worked to establish and protect as their legacy to us, that are in accordance with my sense both of truth and of courtesy.
Now it’s quite possible that there are better solutions, like treating him at another hospital. But the point for me is that I can’t really muster the passion to care about this, not the way I feel about the fate of people who haven’t gone out seeking trouble.
Sebastian: Jesurgislac, is it common practice to deny criminals treatment after their time has been served? Or even while it is being served? I hadn’t gotten the impression that denying medical service was part of the UK prison ideal.
It is standard practice in the UK that a doctor may refuse to treat a patient – except in emergencies, of course – if the patient has been abusive to the doctor. That is, if you want your GP to continue to treat you, you do not hurl insults at them in the morning and turn up in their surgery in the afternoon with a hangnail. It is likewise standard practice in the NHS that NHS staff have a right to work without being abused by patients: a patient who is abusive to NHS staff at a particular hospital may be denied all non-emergency treatment at that hospital.
This is the not the case in the US?
Hilzoy: I think you’re approaching it from the wrong angle. It sounds like you’re weighing the patient’s right to treatment against the hospital staff’s dislike of the person or distaste for his views. My impression from what I’ve read–and Jes’s clarifications seem to shore this up–is that we’re weighing the right to treatment against the well-being of the hospital staff in light of the man’s criminal actions.
That alters the equation somewhat significantly. It still makes me uncomfortable, because this is a slippery slope down which religious fundamentalists have already given us a sharp shove, but it does put it in a different light. There are times when a hospital is justified in refusing to admit someone who harasses or endangers the staff, and if that’s what he was doing then I have no problem with them refusing his business, as long as they don’t turn him away for anything truly life-threatening.
Which they haven’t–they’re only refusing to provide elective services. Consider the analogy of the doctor in a war who upholds his oath by treating an enemy soldier. Does that doctor’s oath obligate him to give the nice enemy a facelift?
I’m going to completely disagree with Bruce though. Doctors shouldn’t make decisions based on the patient being a jerk or a proponent of particular political views.
The crime involved makes a big difference in my view.
“I am 100% certain that this story is mostly fiction created by the anti-choice site you pulled it from.”
The Times of London?
You might want to reconsider. Because that’s a fairly loony thing to say.
Although in fairness, the Times was printing a piece by Mick.Hume@spiked-online.com, and not one of its own editorialists or reporters.
But while British newspapers tend to be somewhat sloppier than American ones, which are hardly perfect, either, about their facts, it seems unlikely that they’d let such specific statements go by without fact-checking them.
“I had thought the question was about a particular hospital, not any hospital. Or are you asserting a right to be treated at a particular hospital?”
If you take him off a long waiting list even if you let him start at the bottom of a list at some other hospital you have dramatically increased the time to treatment for a very painful condition. And can he even just sign up at a non-local hospital for a wait-list issue? I’m not so sure. Also it appears that he sent the photos (NOT threats of violence) to the administration of the hospital not his own doctor. The administration doesn’t do the doctoring, they just authorize to pay for it.
Gary, note that SH linked to two sources. The second apparently an op-ed, so I’m not sure “As reported by” is quite right.
“If you take him off a long waiting list even if you let him start at the bottom of a list at some other hospital you have dramatically increased the time to treatment for a very painful condition.”
Are these facts in evidence in this case? And I take it in your comment to Jes you were using “denying medical treatment” to be equivalent to “delaying medical treatment”?
My 7:12 crossed Gary‘s restatement.
“That sounds very close to government health care discrimination based on the political viewpoint of the patient.”
It sounds like the diametric opposite, actually. When the government rations health care, individual hospitals lose the ability to pick and choose who to treat. Surely American hospitals are free to deny non-critical care to, say, the uninsured?
There’s a 2003 report on A Safer Place To Work: Protecting NHS Staff From Violence And Aggression (warning: PDF file) which made clear that in many NHS hospitals, violence and aggression by members of the public (physical and non-physical) was going underreported by staff or taken for granted as part of the job. The UK government has been working to achieve a change in that situation where NHS staff know they do not have to simply take abuse from patients as part of the job; where NHS trusts have guidelines on being able to deny abusive patients treatment in the same way as GPs can turn away an abusive patient. (local news reporting)
The story is being twisted by the Times to claim that Atkinson is being denied treatment because of his views.
“I was trying to imagine what would get someone found guilty of criminal speech in the US,”
Violating copyright under certain clear and extreme circumstances (beyond the civil penalty; this is very rare), libel (also unusual, beyond civil suits), but mostly direct incitment to violence, riot, or a direct threat, including specifically and particularly to certain categories of officials.
This is not secret info. HTH.
Also: “Hilzoy, if a student has a habit of walking into your office and shouting offensive abuse at you including threats of violence, for which habit the student is eventually banned from campus by the university, would you personally feel you had an obligation to make sure that the student managed to take their exams/do substitute work so that they didn’t fail their course because they’d been banned from campus?”
Hmm. Marking exams.
Operating on someone’s hip s.
Nope, no moral distinctions there. Same thing. One’s as important as the other. Good analogy.
I also see that there was a long later list of various sources for this story, so obviously it wasn’t made up, and so much for “ken’s” “I am 100% certain[ty]. Oh, well.
“Are these facts in evidence in this case?”
Since hip replacement surgery has long wait lists in the UK, yes.
Sebastian: And can he even just sign up at a non-local hospital for a wait-list issue?
Yes.
“Now it’s quite possible that there are better solutions, like treating him at another hospital. But the point for me is that I can’t really muster the passion to care about this, not the way I feel about the fate of people who haven’t gone out seeking trouble.”
The flip side of that, though, Bruce, are all the people who would say the same thing about anti-war protestors about protestors of any sort for a cause you do believe in.
Although I have to say that given that the guy can presumably go to another hospital for his treatment, this case doesn’t strike me as a major issue worth spending much angst on. If the NHS were locking him out, or there was something unique about the care at this one hospital, that would be entirely different.
Gary, I don’t really mind them saying that, either.
Maybe it’s just that I’m feeling touches of regret over energy that could have gone to supporting people I do agree with, like, and love, that went to bailing out ungrateful scumwads who were busy trying to tear down the sort of society that made their existence possible, on one scale or another. Maybe the society I want would be a little stronger now if so many good people hadn’t burned out trying to help those who had no intention of doing their part. Dunno. This is certainly grief talking.
Rilkefan: I don’t think doctors should make decisions on my grounds either. I would like to know a lot more about the details of the guy’s actions and the relevant laws.
Bruce, I think Jes‘s links make the matter nearly crystal clear. The only thing yet to be determined is how much of an inconvenience it will be for the guy to go to another hospital and how many minutes he’s lost by forfeiting his place on line at an institution he committed a crime against.
I will certainly cop to a plea of skipping the legal judgment in favor of a moral one: I think that people who threaten providers of help and then expect the providers to do them good without taking the harassment into help are ungrateful toads, and whatever entitlement they have to care come from universal claims, not personal ones. They may not automatically remove themselves from the network of social claims, but they certainly shouldn’t be surprised when they meet with something less than detached professional calmness.
I don’t regard myself as well positioned to know what would constitute justice for this guy. I do regard myself as in a position to say that I’m not impressed by his misery, if any.
Rilkefan: Belated agreement about the merits of Jesurgliac’s links.
Jes, notwithstanding threats (which don’t seem to be in evidence in this case) I think the point is that providing medical care — even elective medical care — automatically burdens you with a high level of ethical obligation.
The question really revolves around whether you consider hip replacement to be a “compassionate” medical treatment, even if it is elective. Not necessarily around how you treat the particular instance of harassment. e.g. imagine for example that Atkinson was treating his local electrical provider this way. Should they be permitted to shut off his power?
If it’s the middle of winter and he’s going to freeze to death the answer is easy. Otherwise not so easy. But even in summer the balance of power between electrical provider and customer already tilts steeply in favor of the provider, so it seems reasonable to err on the side of caution and favor the customer even when it’s not “fair” in the smaller sense. This strikes me as sorta like that — I think “zero tolerance” policies are no better in British hospitals than they are in US high schools.
OTOH (while I hate to admit it) I find Bruce’s argument about people who “set out to rouse strong emotions” strangely compelling. That makes me sad. Gary’s rebuttal is great in theory but useless in practice, since we’re already in the situation he describes. How fragile we are…
Anders, ouch. That’s a legitimate observation, but it’s also disturbingly close to being a “two wrongs” argument. We already know that healthcare in the US is horribly broken.
I can imagine fact patterns that would justify Sebastion Holsclaw’s outrage, and fact patterns that would justify Jesurgislac’s nonchalance.
It’s still not clear to me that we have the fact pattern in this case pinned down clearly enough to tell which reaction is appropriate here.
But what’s already clear is that this case really has nothing to do with the topic that usual goes under the title of “health care rationing”. (Which is a matter of scarcity of resources, cost-benefit analysis, etc. etc.)
And it’s equally clear that there is nothing in this story that has any bearing on the desirability/advisability of providing health care to a populace through public or private means, via nationalized medicine, single-payer insurance, PPO’s, HMO’s, or cash and carry.
There is no government function, no matter how uncontroversially legitimate (even to libertarians!) that could not be withheld from citizens for illegitimate reasons. (Nightwatchman: “call me an ugly git, eh? Then I won’t guard you, that’s all!”)
It’s also pretty clear that some people who have an ideological hatred of exploring better means for providing health-care will find any stick with which to beat their private devil.
“Bruce, I think Jes’s links make the matter nearly crystal clear.”
I don’t see how her links help at all. That link doesn’t have the specifics of my links, and merely refers to his actions as “abuse” and in violation of a “zero tolerance policy”. What the employee’s union characterizes as ‘abuse’ is apparently the sending of photographs of aborted fetuses. So freaking what? These are allegedly medical professionals. They see stuff that gross all the time. And if it was just the administration, double so what? If he sent the photos to Tony Blair I presume you wouldn’t think it appropriate to take him off the waiting list. Adding 12-15 months to his treatment time for a very painful condition because he sent some pictures you don’t like is ridiculous.
If US Army dentists refused to treat a young man from Afghanistan under their care for a serious root problem that caused enough pain to keep him awake many nights for 12-15 months because he insulted them while treating similarly situated other captives for similar issues, you would correctly call the denial of medical attention and 12-15 month extension of pain “torture”. The UK has taken all citizens under their medical umbrella. Prolonging his pain because he sent some ugly pictures is ridiculous.
I should note that I’d feel exactly the same way about someone seeking to give offense in the service of causes much closer to my own heart, though I agree with anyStick about this particular case.
radish: imagine for example that Atkinson was treating his local electrical provider this way. Should they be permitted to shut off his power?
If he is meeting the meter reader with abuse every time the meter reader attempts to enter his dwelling to read the meter, I fear his local electrical provider would, indeed, act to protect their meter reader from abuse. (Especially as the net result of his abuse would be that his local electrical provider would not be able to send him accurate bills.) At a guess, the solution of the electrical company would be: to send round another meter reader; to have installed a Powercard meter, which does not require meter readers to visit; or to require the customer to switch to another electrical provider. If the customer simply continued to refuse to let any employee of any electrical provider into his home without subjecting them to intolerable abuse, yes, eventually he would likely have his electricity cut off – though it would likely take a few years.
It is accepted in the UK that employers have an obligation to protect their employees from abuse, whether that abuse is directed at the employees by other employees or by members of the public. I’m a little disturbed that apparently such is not the case in the US.
“There is no government function, no matter how uncontroversially legitimate (even to libertarians!) that could not be withheld from citizens for illegitimate reasons.”
Sure. But government can’t withhold what it does not control. Government can’t abuse what it does not have. (See for example registries of all phone calls made….)
“Adding 12-15 months” – sorry, where do these #s come from?
“What the employee’s union characterizes as ‘abuse’ is apparently the sending of photographs of aborted fetuses.” – uhh, was the guy not sent to jail for his actions – after having been warned? It’s not a question of whether I like the pictures or not, it’s a question of people enforcing the law and following administrative procedure. All the scare quotes in the world won’t change that.
“It is accepted in the UK that employers have an obligation to protect their employees from abuse, whether that abuse is directed at the employees by other employees or by members of the public. I’m a little disturbed that apparently such is not the case in the US.”
It is about proportion. It isn’t proportionate to move someone off your treatment list (for even a hangnail) for sending photographs of dead fetuses (and I say fetuses because all right minded medical professionals certainly aren’t stupid enough to believe they are babies right?) Making start over on a 12-15 month waiting list for painful hip condition isn’t in proportion with receiving bloody pictures.
If he sent the photos to Tony Blair I presume you wouldn’t think it appropriate to take him off the waiting list.
Certainly not. Tony Blair isn’t on the staff of any hospital. The issue is whether someone who is abusive to staff at a hospital can then expect receive non-emergency treatment at that hospital.
“‘Adding 12-15 months’ – sorry, where do these #s come from?”
That was the wait for hip replacements in the UK according to a recent suit filed against the NHS, though the BBC reported as of May 27, 2004 that the wait was 11 months.
But frankly even if you were to accept the fastest time I could find (3 months) I wouldn’t consider that an appropriate punishment for something that warranted less than 29 days in jail.
“That was the wait for hip replacements in the UK”
And where was he on the original hospital’s list?
Anyway, no doubt this will encourage people to obey the law in England, much as the awful conditions in US prisons encourage people to obey the law here.
Jes, bearing in mind that anyStick is right about the lack of facts, I don’t think that’s a corresponding case. If you don’t allow the meter reader into your home, you are effectively preventing them from doing their job. Harassing the offices of the utlity does not prevent the meter reader from reading your meter, and does not in fact prevent the meter reader from visiting when you are away, nor does it prevent the utility from sending you the maximum possible bill etc etc.
There is — generally — some compromise to be found. And since overall such compromises are far more likely to be unfair to the customer or patient, the instances when they are unfair to the utility or hospital are best silently passed over with a sigh and a shake of the head.
Sebsastian, thank you for that excellent illustrative example. You do realize that sort of thing actually seems to be happening rather frequently, right?
I don’t understand. Are you saying that the government already had legitimate access those records? Because if not then you are giving an example of what you say does not exist: the govt got what it did not have and abused it quite effectively thankyouverymuch. Rule of law notwithstanding.
I have to say that I’m surprised at the amount of debate this is generating. Yes, the guy was being an insensetive and rude idiot, but one of the things that comes with a society in which morality is not legislated for is that people have the right to be insensitive rude idiots, and they have the right to enjoy basic services despite that.
Some of the most moving stories I’ve read in recent times involve abortion clinic staff treating, with sensitivity and confidentiality, women who stood on the steps of their own abortion clinics, threatening them, and returned to do the same thing the day after their abortion. This is what the English staff should have done, irrespective of what their law says.
Surely even if the actions he took were illegal, denial of medical care does not form part of the legal punishment for his actions. If this is the case, he should not be denied medical care. It’s as simple as that.
(To look at it from a different angle – if Hilzoy and Seb agree there’s probably a strong case being made!)
“Yes, the guy was being an insensetive and rude idiot”
To my mind, the point is that the guy was being a criminal.
Jes, I don’t see how excluding Atkinson from the hospital comes under “protecting staff”. The staff he abused were people in the administrative office, not the ones who would be treating him. It looks a lot more like punishing Atkinson than protecting anyone.
Still, I find it hard to rate this case very high on my long list of things to be outraged about at the moment. I guess Sebastian thinks it contains an important lesson, but like anyStick I don’t see it.
Jes: “You’re saying it would be different if the hospital got a restraining order? How would it be different?”
The idea was that this should have a legal solution, or else a personal one (e.g., staff not wanting to go out for drinks with the guy), but not one undertaken by medical staff in the performance of their duties. I think that’s wrong. And I don’t think that mailing pictures constitutes a threat from which people so badly need to be protected that they should stop doing their jobs.
I agree with Bruce about this person having no real right to complain. But I think it’s not about his consistency, but about the values by which medical professionals should govern themselves.
“To my mind, the point is that the guy was being a criminal.”
Is being denied medical care considered a legitimate punishment for criminals in the UK? I suspect not.
I’ll confess to another bias here, about health care stories in particular.
I’ve been drifting in the direction of support for universal health care for a long time, and been there pretty solidly for some time now. But seeing what’s involved in quality end-of-life care for my father has really radicalized me on the subject. Dad has the benefits of being a veteran, and a NASA employee, and by virtue of working at Jet Propulsion Labs coverage through TIAA/CREF, since Caltech administers JPL. He’s as well set as someone a quintile down from the top can be, pretty much. Even so there are difficult choices involved.
The thought of what those who happen to lack Dad’s advantages must go through at this final stage of life, they and their families, occasionally punches me in the gut, almost literally. It’s not that – from a detached viewpoint – this is news, really. It’s not radically unlike the problems facing, say, me with my chronic health problems, or Gary with his, and our counterparts up and down the ladder. It’s just that it is the final stage of this life, with no room for later redress, and something that will inevitably linger in the survivors’ minds.
So an argument that amounts to “poorer people don’t deserve dignified deaths because see, sometimes overzealous officials might make life difficult for jerks” is hard for me to process. This story is not a useful datum in any meaningful discussion of health care – not least because such things also happen all the time in the private world, and often with less prospect of redress. So it chafes me extra.
“Is being denied medical care considered a legitimate punishment for criminals in the UK?”
Having tried to clarify this point above, I think you’re confused about the meaning of “deny”.
I should add:
I will not feel any quarrel with someone who wants to say, “Bruce, you’re just too emotionally unstable about it right now” and declines to talk about it with me. I am unstable, I admit it, I’m not always handling my grief very well. I’m quite comfortable being a datum in someone else’s argument.
“To look at it from a different angle – if Hilzoy and Seb agree there’s probably a strong case being made!”
Made up fact of the day:
53% of people who wish for a paralyzed government think that Hilzoy and I should be dictators by unanimous consent.
“Having tried to clarify this point above, I think you’re confused about the meaning of “deny”.”
I’m really not. When a pharmacist denies filling a prescription for RU-486 is it less of a denial when the woman can get it elsewhere? That pharmacist still denied the distribution of the drug. The public hospital is denying care in this case. Furthermore, unlike in the pharmacist case, they are noticeably setting back the timeline on the care.
“This story is not a useful datum in any meaningful discussion of health care”
Oh, come, Bruce–that’s not true at all. Why just last week it turned out that one of the counter-guys at our local post office was looking into people’s mail sometimes.
Abolish the Post Office! It’s a bastion of socialism! Government can’t abuse the mail if government doesn’t handle the mail!
Furthermore, last month I read that there was this guy at a toll-booth who would sometimes wave his friends through without paying.
Abolish the post roads! More socialism! Government can’t abuse the roads if government doesn’t build any roads!
And the worst thing about these socialist intrusions into the free market? They were illicitly smuggled into the Constitution! By Socialists! The Socialists even smuggled in a line about “promoting the general Welfare”–boy, doesn’t *that* just burn your britches!
FWIW, there’s a little more to the fact pattern than either the anti-choice sites or the TimesOnLine op-ed mentioned: Mr. Atkinson sent the offensive materials more than once, sent a video as well as the articles, and continued to send the stuff after the hospital wrote to him requesting that he stop. So that makes it a harrassment campaign, not a single incident.
But I can’t agree with the hospital refusing to do the hip replacement, even if he could have it done at another hospital without going through another waiting list.
Here in the good old USA, pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions that they say offend their religious and/or moral beliefs. They have refused to fill morning-after birth control scrips, regular birth control scrips, and I think there’s been one case of a pharmacist refusing to fill an antibiotic scrip because he thought it was for treating an STD.
My reaction to that is quite straightforward: pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions on religious/moral grounds should be fired, have their pharmacist licenses revoked, be heavily fined for practising medicine without a license, and be sued for malpractice.
Telling someone they can fill the scrip elsewhere is putting an undue burden on them.
It seems to me the same principles apply in Atkinson’s case.
It isn’t quite the same, since he harrassed the hospital, but the basic principle holds: people who provide healthcare should damned well provide it, and not put undue burdens on people needing medical care out of personal distaste for the procedure or for the patient.
The only justifiable grounds for refusing to treat someone would be if s/he threatened physical harm. SFAIK, Atkinson didn’t threaten anyone.
A pharmacist refusing to follow the rules and regulations of his profession by denying service because of superstition is not comparable to a hospital following proper procedures to safeguard its employees from those who have acted criminally against it.
I’m with the NHS on this one.
Note that he wasn’t put on probation or sentenced to community service, but jailed. That alone implies that there’s something we’re not hearing here, since you generally have to be pretty obnoxious to get jail time for harassment instead of something that’s cheaper.
Given that he was jailed for the way he treated the hospital staff, I’d think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that they shouldn’t be forced to treat him for non life-threatening conditions. He does have alternatives after all, unlike an enemy soldier in wartime. Maybe having to live with the consequences of his actions will make him think twice the next time he decides to get criminally abusive.
Sebastion, you seem to not quite understand how a “waiting list” for hospital procedures work.
It is NOT an ordinary queue, set as first come/first serve. All other factors being EQUAL, the first in line will go first — but hospitals treat the patient with the most urgent problems first, regardless of when they first sought treatment.
In short, this man’s wait will have far more to do with the severity of his hip problems than with what hospital he choose to have it done at.
I suggest you adjust your argument to account for that. Citing a “12 to 15 month wait for hip surgery” as if it were a wait in line for tickets is quite simply false. Those who wait that long — or longer — are generally being treated for conditions that are stable and can be controlled (but not rectified) by other means.
I don’t happen to agree with you in this case: This hospital denied him non-emergency services. In America, this is done routinely — from reasons ranging from harassment to inability to pay. As there are plenty of other hospitals in the UK, and he’s not joining the end of a 12 month queue — he will be joining a relative handful of other individuals with his severity of hip problems.
rilkefan, I agree with your point; I just don’t know that Atkinson crossed the line to criminal behavior. “Jailed for harrassment” isn’t the same as “physically threatened hospital staff and/or damaged hospital property.”
If it turns out Atkinson’s harrassment went beyond sending inflammatory mailings, if it turns out he did threaten people, then I have no problem with the hospital saying it wouldn’t treat him.
I have to say, that though I dislike the English legal system’s approach to speech, if I worked at a lab in England and some crank kept sending offensive materials to the admin staff because he’s upset at my work to the point that he finally ended up doing time, I would feel acutely uncomfortable passing him in the hall.
I think I would feel better about the entire thing if the hospital were required to obtain a court order. They might well be entitled to obtain one; but I think the courts would do a better job of ensuring that no one’s right to receive medical treatment is unduly infringed.
It isn’t proportionate to move someone off your treatment list (for even a hangnail) for sending photographs of dead fetuses (and I say fetuses because all right minded medical professionals certainly aren’t stupid enough to believe they are babies right?)
We really don’t know precisely what post it note was attached to the images, or how Atkinson expressed himself, but if someone sent me photos of surgical procedures unbidden and I specifically requested that he stop, I would have the strong presumption that he was not trying to expand my factual knowledge base. I’ve worked with doctors here (at my last university, I set up a medical English course and did proofreading for a journal published there), I didn’t notice the doctors getting packets of snaps of operating procedures in the mail. If he got jailed for without the warning, I’d be a bit concerned, but when someone gets warned, it means that they should stop.
As for court orders and such, I imagine that the UK courts operate on a different system, and they have had a bit problem with the notion of court orders, as the wikipedia entry on asbo suggests, but links to the local paper are here and here
have this
Mr Atkinson, of Ely Road, was also made subject to a five-year anti-social behaviour order (ASBO), and told he would have £500 court costs deducted from his benefits. The hospital has barred him from treatment for anything other than life-threatening illnesses.
RF, maybe so, but I’d hope that if you were a medical professional you wouldn’t refuse to treat people just because you felt acutely uncomfortable around them.
Sebastian: That sounds very close to government health care discrimination based on the political viewpoint of the patient.
As bad or worse, I would say, as private health care discrimination based on the economic position of the patient.
Either some background is missing here, or someone went beyond their authority.
According to this (pdf), there are specific procedures to follow before denying treatment.
Apparently, loud and intrusive conversation is considered to be non-physical assault.
KC, depends on whether “acutely uncomfortable” translates to “wet socks” or “fear for my life”.
I just don’t know that Atkinson crossed the line to criminal behavior.
He was jailed for 28 days.
I’d hope that if you were a medical professional you wouldn’t refuse to treat people just because you felt acutely uncomfortable around them.
Well, if I was a medical professional I certainly would hesitate to deny an optional treatment to a person who was threatening me.
Is there no place in this debate for Mr Atkinson assuming personal responsibility for his actions?
I don’t know if it’s been posted yet, but here is the NHS’s Zero Tolerance Policy.
Who was threatening?
I certainly would
That should read “wouldn’t”
“Who was threatening?”
That would presumably be the criminal in the case.
Why would you presume that? The reports said that he sent images of post-abortion fetuses that the made the staff upset and “quite disturbed”. That isn’t the same as “threatening” at all.
Usually people feel threatened when they are the victims of crimes. In any case I was interpreting spartikus‘s comment, since I found it clear enough to jump in.
When UK med staff “feel threatened,” a guy gets his care postponed.
When NYC cops, “feel threatened,” an unarmed guy gets gunned down.
I don’t much care who “feels” threatened.
Are we now playing the game where Sebastian claims not to be aware of some common category (in this case, the suite of crimes that includes stalking and harassment) and we all act like this is some purely innocent ignorance to be remedied by patient lecturing until the whole thing collapses and we never get back to the original point? Just checking.
For those who actually don’t know, the Wikipedia entry on stalking is pretty useful, and handy for discussing the concepts that drive lawmaking about it more than particular statutes.
I thought this was the game where we pretend SH isn’t smarter than us and we can argue with him about legal issues because he’s not dispassionate enough to be unassailable.
Dammit. I was hoping this was the game where we’d all pretend to be grown-ups and then spin the bottle. Oh well.
I have this nice bottle of Knudsen’s sparkling raspberry juice that I’d be happy to spin.
That isn’t the same as “threatening” at all.
Ah, so you’ve talked to Atkinson and know his intent.
spartikus, thanks for the NHS link. If they followed those procedures and Atkinson signed the letter, I’m not sure how he would have any grounds for complaint.
As for excessive noise, this is a hospital where people are trying to recover. If I or a loved one were in a place where someone didn’t have enough respect to pipe down after being asked once, I would be pretty cheesed if I were told that they were just exercising their rights to free speech.
champagne bottles spin very well.
somehow i’ve always believed that hilzoy, jackmormon, lj and jesurgislac are all hotter than than the sun on a clear summer day.
[yes, i’m married, and happily so. yes, i’m aware that jes is gay and likely would not find playing spin the bottle with me to be her life’s passion. {although a lot of people seem to think i’m female — i get a lot of mail addressed to Ms. Frances …} no, i don’t think there is anything wrong with a fantasy or two so long as no one gets hurt. yes, i’m threadjacking.]
sparkling raspberry juice? ye gods, man, did someone blowtorch your taste buds? try a nice dry Normandy cider.
oh, back on topic …. i don’t believe that the criminal justice system should be able to include deprivation of medical procedures as a method of punishment. if this guy’s criminal conduct was so offensive to hospital staff that they feel that they cannot treat him fairly, then the hospital should arrange for another hospital to take him at the same time as he would have received treatment.
Francis: Alcohol is among the many, many, many things I’m severely allergic to. If it’s more than about 10 proof, I can’t touch it.
“yes, i’m married, and happily so. yes, i’m aware that jes is gay and likely would not find playing spin the bottle with me to be her life’s passion. {although a lot of people seem to think i’m female — i get a lot of mail addressed to Ms. Frances …} no, i don’t think there is anything wrong with a fantasy or two so long as no one gets hurt. yes, i’m threadjacking.”
You might be surprised by how hot LJ is.
Jes, I don’t see how excluding Atkinson from the hospital comes under “protecting staff”. The staff he abused were people in the administrative office, not the ones who would be treating him.
Actually, he sent mail to at least one of the nurses, as well – according to one of the news stories about the case I was looking at last night.
Further, NHS policy is that all staff at a hospital deserve to be protected from abuse, not just the medical staff.
Actually (reading comments posted since) it would appear that Hilzoy and Sebastian have both decided that Atkinson’s abuse of hospital staff was not bad enough to justify his being excluded from that hospital. In Sebastian’s case this appears to be because he thinks that no one should be upset by pictures of aborted fetuses, and especially not hospital staff: in Hilzoy’s case, because she thinks that getting sent offensive/upsetting pictures through the post is not sufficiently upsetting to justify being protected from more personal abuse by the sender.
(So, Hilzoy, if a student were persistently sending you and other staff pictures he intended you to find offensive/upsetting, you would protest the student being banned from campus, on the grounds that if he were banned from campus you couldn’t do your job of educating him?)
Francis: if this guy’s criminal conduct was so offensive to hospital staff that they feel that they cannot treat him fairly, then the hospital should arrange for another hospital to take him at the same time as he would have received treatment.
Well, yes. And indeed, allowing for a small amount of bureaucratic delay in getting himself on to the list at another hospital, that’s exactly what will happen. Ted Atkinson is not being denied treatment – end of story: he’s being denied an appointment for assessment for a hip replacement at the hospital he was harassing. He’ll have to go to another hospital.
You might be surprised by how hot LJ is.
I’ll never know given how he ditched me 🙁
This man is a convicted criminal. Convicted criminal.
These people are his victims. His victims.
You are saying that the victims of a criminal should be forced to perform non-essential surgery on him, while there are other perfectly good alternatives avilable. You can’t seriously hold that position.
If, say, this was the only hospital in England capable of performing the exact life-saving surgery that the man needed in 24 hours time to save his life, then, yes, they should treat him. Guess what? They would. They’d even treat him if he had a life threatening condition that other hospitals were capable of dealing with.
What the man’s criminal speech was is irrelevant. It was, in the eyes of the English law, sufficent to warrant a month long stay in HM’s Prisons. That is where he violated the hospital’s zero tolerance policy.
He isn’t being denied treatment at that hospital for his political speech; he is being denied treatment at that particular hospital for commiting criminal acts against its employees. He isn’t being denied treatment completely either. He won’t be able to receive that treatment at the place of his choosing.
You know, a criminal being forced to go to a different hospital from that which he victimised, to receive a non-essential treatment, with the assurance that, in the event of any life-threatening emergency he’ll be treated at the original hospital, really doesn’t strike me as at all political, or even all that bad.
By the way, the US rations healthcare too. And, because it does it by means of money, and, if you make the right political choices and therefore place yourself in a position to take advantage of graft, corruption, etc, then you, as a society, will have rationed it politically. It is quite easy to argue that every person in the US who has benefited from the various political patronage systems in place in the US has had their healthcare ration based on their political activities, just as much as this guy.
Whether the rationing is done by society through the market, or more directly through the government, it is still rationing by society.
I’ll never know given how he ditched me 🙁
Typical male, I am. I thought we agreed to see other people…
Typical male, I am. I thought we agreed to see other people…
I never promised exclusivity either — but to completely throw me over for some hussy you’d been married to for years? That’s just wrong, LJ, and you know it.
As an aside, since this seems the appropriate place for it: apparently “talking to”, amongst the hip young crowd, is now a euphemism for oral sex. Which led to some serious confusion between myself and a student when I was trying to figure out why they were so drowsy in class the next day…
I’ll be interested to see if Sebastian ever updates this to acknowledge that what initially looked to him like “political health care rationing” (on the basis of a pro-life site and an op-ed in a right-wing newspaper) was, in fact, nothing of the kind.
you may as well wait for Reagan to acknowledge that trees don’t cause air pollution.
Yes, friends, this was another fine installment in the right-wing’s “welfare queen” series of contributions to sound debate on public policy.
Find an incendiary anecdote–or at least something that looks, from a distance, like an incendiary anecdote–and use it to argue against programs that help millions of people. See if you can get everyone arguing about just how many Cadillacs she did or didn’t own, while you walk away pleased at having smeared your target with negative associations.
Seenit: Sebastian is not “the right wing”, and if it was meant to call government health care programs as a whole into question, I don’t think it had the slightest bit of success, since virtually none of us, on whatever side of the argument, have drawn any such conclusion from this incident. Because, of course, it has nothing to do with whether or not the program was run by the government.
Hilzoy: Because, of course, it has nothing to do with whether or not the program was run by the government.
The point is that Sebastian, in his front page post, is claiming both that Edward Atkinson is being punished for his political views (not true: the best you can argue is that he has been put to extra trouble by expressing his political views in a criminal manner), and that this is “very close to government health care discrimination based on the political viewpoint of the patient” which is flatly untrue. Further, the title of Sebastian’s post is an assertion which is flagrantly untrue. It would be appropriate for Sebastian to acknowledge in an update that the title of his post is misleading, because the op-ed in the Times led him to believe an untruth.
Jes: I agree that it’s not all that close to “government health care discrimination based on the political viewpoint of the patient.” I also think that the “government” in this sentence just reflects the fact that this is a government-run hospital. In another country, it could just as easily have been “private health care discrimination etc.”, especially since I haven’t seen any allegation that the government had anything to do with the hospital’s decision.
Despite that, I think Seb has the right not to be conflated with the entire right wing.
was the post “meant to call government health care programs as a whole into question”?
the title certainly suggests that–“health care rationing” being one of the bugbears of anti-universal care side (though as keir points out, rationing is exactly what we have now).
also consider SH’s response when “anystick” up above suggested, as you just did, that this story “has nothing to do with whether or not the program was run by the government”:
“Sure. But government can’t withhold what it does not control. Government can’t abuse what it does not have.”
That response certainly suggests that the real agenda is to keep government out of healthcare. After all, look at this horrible, shocking abuse. If we could only keep the evil government from having any role in healthcare, we could prevent abuses like this.
So–was it a good argument against universal health-care? No. Was it “meant to call government health care programs as a whole into question”? Well, it looks that way to me, and also to Bruce Baugh, who read it as “an argument that amounts to “poorer people don’t deserve dignified deaths because see, sometimes overzealous officials might make life difficult for jerks.”
But if the whole point was just to relate one isolated and unrepeatable incident about a sad pro-life git in England, I think it was highly un-newsworthy.
On preview: I withdraw any imputation that Sebastian Holsclaw is the entire right wing.
Despite that, I think Seb has the right not to be conflated with the entire right wing.
Wasn’t disputing that.
Were you going to respond to any of my questions?
LAte to the party.
FWIW, I tend to agree with those who sided with the hospital. Medical providers in thsi country frequently refuse to provide care for patients based upon non-criminal actions.
My wife is a nurse in a very large family practice, and it is understood that iof any patient is abusive in any way to any of the staff, they are warned that if they repeat the behavior, they will no longer be tretaed in that practice. If the action is repeated, they are “fired” as patients.
Hospitals do the same thing. And this is not government run health care.
To me, the main points are that what this man did was considered criminal activity, he had been told to stop doing that behavior, he continued to do this behavior, he is now dealing with the consequences of his behavior.
Can he still obtain the treatment he is looking for? Yes he can.
And the analogy to pharmacists is irrelevant. If a pahrmacist refused to provide services for a customer that was constantly harassing them, then it would be an appropriate analogy, but only then.
And BTW, I would agree with the pharmacist’s right to not have that person be a customer.
“I’ll be interested to see if Sebastian ever updates this to acknowledge that what initially looked to him like “political health care rationing” (on the basis of a pro-life site and an op-ed in a right-wing newspaper) was, in fact, nothing of the kind.”
A) He expressed his political views by posting photographs.
B) He was criminally punished for it–bad enough right there.
C) He was taken off the list for health care (there is as yet no evidence whatsoever for present tranfer) while currently experiencing a treatable and painful condition.
If he were an Afghan in the US medical system by capture and his treatment for a painful yet non-life-threatening disease was delayed for months for his political viewpoint (or cooperation level) that would correctly be called torture. The US doesn’t have responsibility for the medical treatment of all Afghan men, but it does assume responsibility for those in its care. The UK has assumed responsibility for the health care of all its citizens. If the UK had decided not to treat this disease for all patients under its care, there would not be political viewpoint discrimination. It is in fact allowing the administrative delay of a painful medical condition which is treated under its system. It is doing so even though criminals are treated under its system. The fact that this particular criminal even if no longer incarcerated suggests viewpoint discrimination.
Jesurgislac, you would call it torture if US Army doctors did it.
But Sebastian, there is no evidence at all that his access any medical care was actually delayed by bein removed from a waiting list at one hospital.
This is a tempest in a teapot. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a health care provider can refuse to provide care to an individual because that individual had engaged in a harassment campaign against the provider. The story, as linked, is not terribly detailed about precisely what Atkinson did and said (he mailed bloody pictures of aborted fetuses to various hospital employees. Was there accompanying text? What did it say?) You don’t think that his actions amounted to harassment — if I knew what they were in detail, I might agree with you, but without that knowledge (which you also lack) I don’t see any reason to disagree with the hospital’s judgment.
And of course this has absolutely nothing to do with ‘rationing’ — I can’t imagine how that word made it into the title of the post.
Jesurgislac, you would call it torture if US Army doctors did it.
Er, yes, because anybody being treated by US Army doctors who isn’t a soldier probably isn’t there voluntarily, and because the ethical standards for treatment of somebody you captured largely by jogging through loopholes in international law are somewhat different from those for treatment of somebody who committed a crime. This isn’t rocket science.
One would note that within a ten mile radius, Mr. Atkinson can attend over a dozen different public hospitals other than the Queen Elizabeth in King’s Lynn, all of which are quite willing to treat him once he’s spent his time on the waitlist.
Oh, he was already on a waitlist? My word. Amazing how non-essential treatment can get delayed when you break the law and harass the people who are making you wait. It’s simply shocking.
A) He expressed his political views by posting photographs.
B) He was criminally punished for it–bad enough right there.
He engaged in a harassment campaign. He was warned that what he was doing was a criminal offense and asked to desist. He did not desist, and was convicted and jailed.
C) He was taken off the list for health care (there is as yet no evidence whatsoever for present tranfer)
He got out of jail last Friday, Sebastian. You’ve been told by several people with direct knowledge of how the NHS works that he can go on to the waiting list at another hospital. Do you think we’re all lying to you?
If he were an Afghan in the US medical system by capture and his treatment for a painful yet non-life-threatening disease was delayed for months for his political viewpoint (or cooperation level) that would correctly be called torture.
And the relevance of this to Edward Atkinson’s situation is… what? Atkinson is not (now) a prisoner: he is at liberty to ask his GP to put him on the waiting list for an appointment at another hospital. He isn’t being denied treatment, and you have no evidence whatsoever that this change in hospitals will lead to a delayed hip replacement – if his appointment for assessment establishes that this is the appropriate treatment.
It is in fact allowing the administrative delay of a painful medical condition which is treated under its system. It is doing so even though criminals are treated under its system. The fact that this particular criminal even if no longer incarcerated suggests viewpoint discrimination.
Why? Do you have evidence that other criminals who harassed staff at a hospital by sending hate mail were treated at the hospital where they had harassed staff? You do realise that this is the issue: Atkinson was found guilty of sending malicious communications to staff at that hospital. If you can find another example of someone sending malicious communications to staff at an NHS hospital who was not removed from their waiting lists, then you would have some evidence that the issue was “viewpoint discrimination”, rather than – as all the evidence suggests it is – criminal harassment.
Jesurgislac, you would call it torture if US Army doctors did it.
You think I would call it torture if a US Army doctor refused to treat a patient who had verbally abused him, and a different US Army doctor treated that patient instead? Answer: no.
I’m coming into this debate late (again) and haven’t read the whole comment thread, so I apologize if I’m repeating an argument that has already been beaten into the ground. However…
While I disagree with the decision to ban Atkinson from the QEH, the decision can be justified ethically. A doctor or other health care provider is allowed, even ethically obligated, to refuse to enter into a treatment relationship with a patient if they feel that they can not treat that patient to the best of their ability for any reason. Reasons can be because they are too close to the patient emotionally (ie a close relative) or because they dislike the patient so strongly that they fear that their emotion may cloud their clinical judgement. If someone sent me pictures of aborted fetuses, I’d certainly have trouble looking at them strictly as a patient, ignoring their actions. (Their views are another matter. I’ve treated racists, sexists, homophobes, fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, etc without any problem. It’s the semi-threatening behavior of sending the pictures that is problematic in my mind.) It does seem like stretching it to say that the whole hospital is too emotionally involved, but maybe no one at the hospital is willing to treat him any more.
It might be worth pointing out that Atkinson was only banned from one hospital, not all NHS hospitals. He’s complaining because he’ll now have to go to another hospital, further away, to get his hip replacements. I suspect he won’t have to travel nearly as far to get them as, say, the average Kansan would have to travel to get a hip replacement. Almost certainly less far than she would have to travel to get an abortion.
And the relevance of this to Edward Atkinson’s situation is… what? Atkinson is not (now) a prisoner: he is at liberty to ask his GP to put him on the waiting list for an appointment at another hospital.
I should say: standard procedure is that you go to your GP, and your GP asks the appropriate local health care provider to put you on a waitlist (long or short, depending on the urgency of your health needs). It’s possible that Atkinson would have had to go back to his GP and ask: it’s also possible the hospital will themselves have arranged to have Atkinson transferred to another hospital’s waitlist. I don’t have any direct experience with this, because I’ve never myself criminally harassed NHS staff nor known anyone who did. However, the picture Sebastian apparently has of an old man cast out from the government health care system to suffer without redress is just… well, wrong.
“he is at liberty to ask his GP to put him on the waiting list for an appointment at another hospital.”
He is also at complete liberty, it should be said, to get medical help from any of the thousands of private providers of medical care in the UK. There’s an entire industry of private practice MD’s and clinics.
If Mr. Atkinson’s champions in the US pro-life community want to put together a kitty for their martyred hero, he can get a new hip this week.
You see, there’s nothing to stop people with a lot of money in the UK from getting special treatment at private hospitals. I recommend the Wellington, in St. Johns Woods NW–excellent service, first rate surgeons, even the food is good.
True, it is very exclusive, and you have to be wealthy to get into it. But that simply means that it’s a lot like the US healthcare system (food aside). The difference is that if you *cannot* afford it, you are not left to die in poverty.
So here’s another disanalogy from the Afghani prisoner scenario (whose aid in clear thinking almost makes me long for ticking time-bombs): people under a universal health care system are not prisoners of it.
Let us suppose an NHS hospital that was carrying out “female circumcision” on adult women. (This is, in fact, illegal, but let’s suppose it’s not.)
Let us suppose that I wished to protest the hospital doing this, and did so by sending photographs of FGM to hospital staff. And that, like Atkinson, I was warned that what I was doing was illegal and asked to desist.
If I decided that the issue was sufficiently important that I felt it was worth the risk of jail and being banned from that hospital, I would continue. What I would not do is then whine about it when I was landed with the consequences of my actions – consequences I’d been warned about and had decided to risk.
I don’t agree with Atkinson’s opinions about abortion: and as an activist, I think he’s a bloody whiner.
“He got out of jail last Friday, Sebastian. You’ve been told by several people with direct knowledge of how the NHS works that he can go on to the waiting list at another hospital. Do you think we’re all lying to you?”
And I acknowledged that YESTERDAY. That would explain why I’ve been talking about causing delay of his treatment since more than a dozen (of my own) comments ago.
Speaking of waiting lists, I saw Morat’s objection but I see that I didn’t respond. Morat wrote:
I understand that waitlists at hospitals are generally by medical priority. But that doesn’t suggest at all that going to another list won’t create a very significant delat. Say there are 5 levels of medical priority and Atkinson is in the middle level of priority. All people at a higher level of priority will go ahead of him. All at a lower will go after him. All at his level who got in to line earlier will go ahead of him. If people at his priority level take about six months to be treated, that will be because that is how long it takes to get to the head of the line at your priority level. Starting over again at another hospital will start that entire timeframe over. The fact that people are listed in different priority levels will not effect the analysis unless he changes priority levels. The delay effect of changing lists will be worse and worse as you go down the priority types.
Do we know where he was in the original list? Do we know he’ll lose his place on transfer?
Anyway, this was an interesting topic, and I always appreciate an opportunity to disagree with hilzoy, so thanks, SH.
Sebastian: Starting over again at another hospital will start that entire timeframe over.
Can you cite the NHS guidelines which you looked up that told you that? Or are you just making it up?
The hospitals maintain their own lists.
Sebastian: The hospitals maintain their own lists.
Yes. But what NHS guidelines on how to place patients on waitlists were you citing when you asserted that you knew Edward Atkinson would definitely have to wait longer to get an appointment to have his need for a hip replacement assessed? I don’t know that: I don’t know how long the waitlist is at whatever hospital Atkinson has been transferred to. How do you know?
You’re only half right. 😉
Jes: However, the picture Sebastian apparently has of an old man cast out from the government health care system to suffer without redress is just… well, wrong.
I’m also puzzled by the concern for this man’s possible lack of access to this treatment, yet seemingly little for those in, say, the US who cannot obtain the same treatment due to financial considerations.
Of course, I don’t understand the US system very well, and while I assume that those without coverage or large amounts of money would not be able to get hip replacements, I could well be wrong. Are those without coverage able to get free treatment for this very painful condition?
*sigh* I was kind of hoping we could discuss medical ethics instead of politics, but…
Regardless of what Mick Hume says, Atkinson’s political views are not particularly relevant. If Atkinson had sent a heartfelt but polite letter, every single day, to the effect that he opposed abortion etc etc, he would still be on the list. By the same token, if he had sent pictures of dismembered Iraqis (or box turtle pron or whatever) he would still be off the list. And if he really wanted to make a statement of conscience he would refuse not only the hip treatment but all other treatment as well.
So please let’s not get all misty eyed about Atkinson the brave civil disobedient, because in practice it’s pretty clear that he’s at least as much a garden-variety [deleted] as he is a political activist. My position is that the hospital is responsible for ensuring his “place in line” so to speak, even if he is an [deleted] of the first water, but any way you cut it the political aspect of his speech is not what got him in trouble.
There is that bit about “alternative care arrangements” being “pursued with vigor by the appropriate clinician.” It’s not clear whether or not it applies to waiting lists though. It might just be for in-patients. But as I said, there are compromises available. Like allowing Atkinson to switch spots with someone at another hospital, so the other patient gets their hip done at QE and Atkinson at the other hospital.
d-p-u, I think we can all agree that the US system is terribly terribly broken and has far more serious and pervasive problems than the UK system. The lack of concern here is indeed puzzling (or not, if you think of it as a predictable outcome of unfettered capitalism), but the lack of concern seems mostly to be at the national level. There is, particularly in some states, a pretty substantial grassroots movement attempting to address it.
Ungood++ shoots…and it’s good! A perfect score!
“I’m also puzzled by the concern for this man’s possible lack of access to this treatment, yet seemingly little for those in, say, the US who cannot obtain the same treatment due to financial considerations.”
That is why it is a discrimination issue. When you assume care for everyone you shouldn’t get to discriminate against people who are cranky about expressing their political views.
As I said before, the government may certainly choose not to offer replacement hips for people at the same level of sickness as Mr. Atkinson. Prolonging his treatment based on his crotchey views isn’t.
And with respect to some huge threat level, if the Court believed he had offered serious threats, isn’t 28 days in jail a little bit short?
heh, ‘crotchety’
That is why it is a discrimination issue. When you assume care for everyone you shouldn’t get to discriminate against people who are cranky about expressing their political views.
To my way of thinking, an offended hospital staff refusing treatment to a single political crank is of less concern (by a magnitude) than hospital staff refusing treatment to hundreds of thousands because of their economic position within society.
When you assume care for everyone you shouldn’t get to discriminate against people who are cranky
How is protecting your workers from Atkinson discrimination against Atkinson, exactly? Employers, and this is especially true in the public sector, have a legal duty to protect their employees. At least in Britain, and my country.
Atkinson made the choice here. He was officially warned, yet chose to continue to send the material, an act which was in violation of British law.
Let’s not forget too that Atkinson’s “cranky actions” do nothing to serve his “political goals”. Medical staff don’t write laws, politicians do. What was his purpose?
isn’t 28 days in jail a little bit short?
Too long or too short, the relevant point is he was convicted by a court.
dpu:
You are more concerned about tens of thousands of deaths caused by the private market than about one man inconvenienced by the State?
You liberals make me sick.
I may have missed who these medical staff exactly were, but we live in a world where abortion workers have been murdered. The only abortion clinic I have been in had three “airlocks” you had to go through in turn to enter, complete with reinforced doors and bullet proof glass. That’s for a reason.
“When you assume care for everyone you shouldn’t get to discriminate against people who are cranky about expressing their political views.”
Agreed. But that’s not what happened here. People are not jailed (for any amount of time) for being cranky about expressing their political views. At least, I hope they’re not.
Put it this way. There are two different ways of describing what this man did.
(1) He was cranky about expressing a political view;
(2) He committed the crime of harassment.
If he ONLY did #1, and did NOT do #2, then obviously both sending him to jail and taking him off the medical waiting list are WRONG and BAD and we would all be up in ars about them. But if that were the case, I would think that the more serious blow to his civil liberties would be sending him to jail! Why focus on the denial of medical care when the man was sent to jail when he hadn’t even committed a crime? Makes no sense.
But it appears that #2 is a more accurate description of the facts — given that he went to jail, and nobody is complaining about the jail term!
Therefore, describing his actions ONLY in terms of #1 is misleading.
Conclusion. The man committed a crime. The people against whom he committed the crime will, AS A RESULT OF HIS CRIME AGAINST THEM, not treat him. He can go somewhere else.
…..
Another way of putting the same conclusion.
(A) If this is a case of viewpoint discrimination, one would expect a series of similar decisions by hospitals based on viewpoint. People who express their viewpoint that abortion is wrong, in a whole host of different ways, will be systematically taken off of waiting lists at that hospital.
But
(B) If this is a case of “illegal harassment gets you taken off of waiting lists,” then we would expect a series of similar decisions by hospitals based on illegal harassment. People who harass hospital staff, for whatever reason, political or non-political, will be systematically taken off of waiting lists at that hospital.
It is pretty obvious (to me, at least) that B is the correct analysis of the situation, and the mind-set within which the situation should be analyzed.
Coming in late, after sorted through the thread, my opinion now is pretty much the same as when I started. When you are abusive to any staff in my organization, especially when you repeat such abusive behavior, I have a right, and in many cases an obligation, to refuse you further services from my staff.
As an example, we receive many abusive parents here at my H.S. Quite a few of them have to be reprimanded for their abuse of teachers. Occassionally, we have to inform them that they will either need to tone it down or we will not allow them on campus for a set amount of time. Rarely (still a couple of times a year), we actually have to bar a parent from campus. This same procedure is followed for abusive students.
Now, a large part of me says that denial or delay of education is as bad as, if not worse than, denial of hip replacement surgery. However, if and when someone abuses the staff of our school, we must be able and willing to deny them service. This is especially true even when such conduct is illegal, and is true even if such behavior is not assault or threat thereof.
If I were receiving incessant mailings on private school vouchers from an irate parent and, after multiple attempts at resolution, they were eventually charged with a crime, I would expect to be able to say I no longer wish to deal with them. If it were a child, I would expect them to be removed from the school.
Spartikus: The only abortion clinic I have been in had three “airlocks” you had to go through in turn to enter, complete with reinforced doors and bullet proof glass. That’s for a reason.
I know someone who worked in one of our local clinics. One of their work-related “benefits” was a top of the line home security system and regular police drive-bys and check-ins.
“I may have missed who these medical staff exactly were, but we live in a world where abortion workers have been murdered.”
We live in a world where homosexuals have been murdered by Muslims yet even a terrorist in a UK prison would get medical treatment.
“If he ONLY did #1, and did NOT do #2, then obviously both sending him to jail and taking him off the medical waiting list are WRONG and BAD and we would all be up in ars about them. But if that were the case, I would think that the more serious blow to his civil liberties would be sending him to jail! Why focus on the denial of medical care when the man was sent to jail when he hadn’t even committed a crime? Makes no sense.”
I think putting him in jail was almost certainly wrong too. But I know that the UK has different views on free speech than the US. My point is that even if you believe that posting pictures of aborted fetuses is a punishable offense, it ought not be punishable by delaying medical treatment that the government has assumed responsibility for. I don’t believe that non-violent picture harassment should be punishable by 28 days in jail (far too much punishment) and I don’t believe that violent harassment should be punishable by only 28 days in jail (far too little punishment).
But in either case, if you offer treatment to the entire population you ought not discriminate against someone for expressing his political views with photographs.
Some of the crosstalk on this thread comes from people who really want to disagree with the law itself, not its application. I mean the debate about whether or not there was a threat is irrelevant–the English court thought there was a violation of their law and that’s all that matters in their country. An Obwi reader might not like the law itself, but I don’t think a case for discrimination can be made unless it turns out that the law was only applied to this man and not to others or applied to this man in a different way than the law was applied to others.
SH,
I have seen you refer to Mr. Atkinson’s behavior as “posting pictures of aborted fetuses”. I am guessing that you mean “putting them in the post” with this phrase, not hanging them in a public forum, correct. I just want to clarify this, because I am more familiar with using the term “mailing” in this context. “Posting” in the sense of displaying in a public forum, would be fine. What Mr. Atkinson did is harassment, even by U.S. standards. Every time I see you use the term “posting”, it makes me feel like you are trying to understate what he did, and I just realized it might all be a misunderstanding, but one that others had as well.
dpu: “Of course, I don’t understand the US system very well, and while I assume that those without coverage or large amounts of money would not be able to get hip replacements, I could well be wrong. Are those without coverage able to get free treatment for this very painful condition?”
Actually, anyone, with or without insurance and/or money, can get treated at a public hospital in the US. However, they will get a bill. If they ignore that bill their credit will be ruined, assets can be (but aren’t usually) seized, and they get harassed in various ways. Apparently, people attempting to collect on hospital bills in the US imply that if the bill isn’t paid the hospital will refuse to treat the patient in the future. This is utterly untrue and, indeed, would be illegal at a public hospital, but the threat is enough to make people pay and, periodically, keep them from getting proper treatment because they are afraid they might lose the possibility of getting treated in an emergency. Private hospitals can and do refuse to treat people on the basis of lack of funds/insurance. They’re supposed to treat emergencies and stabilize for transfer to a public hospital regardless of financial status, but they don’t always do it very well.
“I have seen you refer to Mr. Atkinson’s behavior as “posting pictures of aborted fetuses”. I am guessing that you mean “putting them in the post” with this phrase, not hanging them in a public forum, correct. I just want to clarify this, because I am more familiar with using the term “mailing” in this context.”
Hmm, I was actually picturing hanging them in a private forum (i.e. trespass). But you are right, the reports probably mean “mailing”. But mailing with pictures to a government entity ought not be punishable by having your treatment denied. Now I am open to the idea that if he mailed it to the homes of the individual administrative staff that I have totally misinterpreted the whole thing. But mailing to the hospital? Not a problem. And even if the UK doesn’t want to protect speech as much as the US, administratively (i.e. not through the court system) denying public benefits on that basis is a bad idea in my opinion.
Sebaastion: HE WAS JAILED FOR IT. You don’t seem to want to grasp that.
[i]He was thrown in jail for his actions against the hospital[/i]. Those actions were a [i]crime[/i].
The hospital responded by REFUSING non-emergency treatment to a man who [i]committed and was convicted of a crime against them[/i].
Do you think it shouldn’t be a crime? Argue that, then! Do you think hospitals shouldn’t be allowed to deny care to those who commit crimes against them? Argue that then!
As best I can tell, you’re trying to have an argument about whether a hospital can deny non-emergency care for a man who merely sent them political literaure in the mail.
Who cares? That’s not the case here, and no one has actually brought up a case of that happening.
Let’s make it simple and VERY to the point for you:
1) Does a hospital — private or public — have the right to deny non-emergency treatment to someone who has been convicted of a crime against the hospital or it’s staff? Not a “Pay a 100 dollar fine” crime, but a “90 days in jail” crime?
Yes or no? Everything else you’re arguing is your invention, projected onto reality so you can argue whatever you really want to argue without having inconvienent facts clutter the situation. Address the facts, please. Crime, conviction, denial of non-emergency treatment. Which part are you having a problem with?
As I said before, the government may certainly choose not to offer replacement hips for people at the same level of sickness as Mr. Atkinson. Prolonging his treatment based on his crotchey views isn’t.
this is nothing to do with the government. If Atkinson was as a result of the hospital’s action unable to get NHS elective treatment others can get, or severely disadvantaged in getting it, then it would become a government matter, as some part of the government would have to step in, as he has a right to that treatment free at the point of entry. But patients here have no absolute right to NHS elective treatment at the hospital of their choice.
As for prolonging: we don’t know. I doubt he’d be booted off the queue back to his GP, to start the process all over again. I imagine if someone did try to do that to him he’d try to sue under the Human Rights Act. But anyway it sounds as though that isn’t going to happen.
FYI we have private hospitals here and I bet they’d turn a patient down in similar circumstances.
But mailing with pictures to a government entity ought not be punishable by having your treatment denied. Now I am open to the idea that if he mailed it to the homes of the individual administrative staff that I have totally misinterpreted the whole thing. But mailing to the hospital? Not a problem.
I think there would be a difference between mailing to ‘Administrator of Hospital X’ and ‘Kathleen May, Administrator of GLUK hospital’. I don’t believe that a person gives up all of their rights when they go to their office and sit down at their desk.
Assuming that procedure had been followed, the relevant authorities had contacted Mr. Atkinson and asked him to stop. That someone would continue to do that speaks to intention to threaten and intimidate. And the argument that he must not have been a threat because he only got a week in jail is rather tortured. I’m not precisely sure how punishments are meted out in the UK system, but I’m sure that the judge has the option of assigning an appropriately measured amount of punishment in order to encourage lawful behavior. That you argue that he must not have been a threat because the judge only had him locked up for a week seems like a last ditch effort to defend the argument. I also think that lily’s point is excellent and it might help the discussion if you have a problem with UK law or if you have a problem because he was advocating against abortion and was subject to this punishment.
Morat20, if you find it hard to spell “Sebastian”, allow me suggest you try cutting-and-pasting or using my solution, writing “SH”.
lj, time flies when one is having fun, but still I don’t think of 28 days as a week.
SH,
In essense, this is just to draw your attention to and(hopefully) summarize my above long and tortured post.
I work at a public school. If someone repeatedly sent me literature, even if it was at my work address, and even after they were repeatedly requested to stop, I would expect them to be reprimanded, possibly jailed (depending on the severity and longevity) and would also expect them to be refused service (contact if a parent, lessons taught by me and possibly anyone else at the school, if a child).
This strikes me as an analogous situation. Is there a reason it is not? If not, is there a reason I am being unreasonable?
“This strikes me as an analogous situation. Is there a reason it is not? If not, is there a reason I am being unreasonable?”
I don’t think it is particularly analougous (hip problems produce a daily and high level of pain) and I think you are probably being unreasonable in any case especially with (“lessons taught by me and possibly anyone else at the school, if a child”).
That is for letters that are gross or inappropriate but not threatening.
In a public school setting I can imagine a student inappropriately sending relgious literature to a teacher (suggesting that they need to repent for example). I do not believe it would be appropriate for the whole school to refuse to teach her.
Now say she kept on doing it. And she sent literature to other people at the school. And the school asked her to stop and she didn’t. And the nature of her communications was egregious enough that she was convicted of a crime and jailed on the basis of those communications.
You still think evicting her from the school would be an odd thing to do?
lj, time flies when one is having fun, but still I don’t think of 28 days as a week.
He was sentenced to 28 days, but released after a week. He seems to be used to it:
Also, it’s worth noting that the staff afffected were not hands-on medics:
I tend to agree with Bruce Baugh. The guy was pretty determined to be “victimised”.
This breaks down into multiple issues.
A) I don’t think it should have been a crime.
B) If a crime he should be punished by the court.
C) The court could have ordered him to cease having any contact (including treatment) at that hospital if it felt he was a threat. It didn’t so order.
The hospital should not deny care on the basis of speech, nor should it deny care on the basis of some general idea of “crimes”. A hospital should (and does) treat jaywalkers, tax cheats, embezzlers, and rapists. At no point in the reports does the hospital mention threats or even a more amorphous ‘feeling threatened’. The reports mention things like “feeling sick”, “being upset” and “being disturbed” by the pictures of the aborted fetuses. That sounds like a reaction to seeing pictures of “fetuses” that look a lot like pictures of “babies”. That has the same intention as pictures from Abu Gharib. You are supposed to FEEL badly about it and THINK that it is wrong. If the pictures were accompanied by theats, it would be one thing. There is no mention of that and the way things played out afterwards suggest otherwise. If there were threats, I am very surprised that the hospital didn’t bother to mention that. It makes their case so much stronger that its omission (if true) is shocking. (This is especially the case by the time we get to the report of the hospital union supporting the decision. At that point they knew it was becoming a controversy and still did not mention threats).
We live in a world where homosexuals have been murdered by Muslims yet even a terrorist in a UK prison would get medical treatment.
Atkinson isn’t being denied necessary medical treatment. Full. Stop.
This has been pointed out many times in this thread, no?
And yes, a terrorist who abused medical staff, even medical staff in the prison system (and I point that out because comparing a situation occurring outside the prison system with one occurring in it is not analogous), would be denied non-critical care.
This is going in circles, so I’ll leave it at that.
“And yes, a terrorist who abused medical staff, even medical staff in the prison system (and I point that out because comparing a situation occurring outside the prison system with one occurring in it is not analogous), would be denied non-critical care.”
Criminals can’t get hip replacements? If true I’m very surprised. Please confirm.
And just for the record “abused staff” as the only way you will refer to “sent photographs of fetuses” is very much shying away from the issue.
If he was hitting people, call that abuse. If he was slapping people, call that abuse. If he was pulling their hair, call that abuse. If he was torturing their pets, call that abuse. Mailing photographs is not the same kind of “abuse”.
Out of curiosity, what would the analogous context in the US be, and what would the law (which I presume is state-by-state) dictate?
First we would have to come up with an analogous state entity. A VA hospital? I know for a fact (I lived 5 blocks from a VA hospital for 2 years in college and I knew people who worked there) that the doctors and nurses took a lot of crap from the patients.
SH: Mailing photographs is not the same kind of “abuse”.
You seem barely able to refer to the act as a crime – it seems unfair to chide someone about “abused staff”. Perhaps we can all agree, since they are victims of a crime, on “victimized staff”?
Why does Sebastian keep saying that Mr. Atkinson has been denied health care and put in prison “for expressing his political views”, as if all he did was write a snippy letter to The Times?
He is a criminal. Sending disturbing pictures to someone after you have repeatedly been asked to stop is not free speech, it it harassment. It is a crime and he was rightly punished for it.
Even in the US, which (thankfully) has greater protections for free speech, I can’t imagine that what Mr. Atkinson did would recieve any protection under the First Ammendment. A US hospital might have to jump through a few more hoops, getting a formal restraining order and such, but the end result would be the same.
Criminals can’t get hip replacements? If true I’m very surprised. Please confirm.
Criminals might not be able to get non-critical free medical assessment and treatment from staff at the institution whose staff they abused. They remain entitled to it and have rights to it under the Human Rights Act etc..
I hope that’s clear.
Criminals can’t get hip replacements? If true I’m very surprised. Please confirm.
Criminals might not be able to get non-critical free medical assessment and treatment from staff at the institution whose staff they abused. They remain entitled to it and have rights to it under the Human Rights Act etc..
I hope that’s clear.
Sebastian: This breaks down into multiple issues. A) I don’t think it should have been a crime.
Okay, so you feel that it ought not to be a crime for one person to harass another by sending offensive letters to them. But ritish law disagrees, and finds malicious communications to be a crime. Further, Edward Atkinson was well aware that by continuing to send malicious communications he was committing a crime.
B) If a crime he should be punished by the court.
He was: the court jailed him for 28 days for 3 counts of malicious communications, plus 14 days for an unpaid fine for a similiar offense in 2002. Because he had already spent 5 weeks in prison on remand, that time was counted against his sentence (standard procedure) and he therefore spent only a week in jail after his trial. link
C) The court could have ordered him to cease having any contact (including treatment) at that hospital if it felt he was a threat. It didn’t so order.
The court gave him a five-year ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) prohibiting him from sending any such malicious communications to hospitals in the next five years. link
The hospital should not deny care on the basis of speech, nor should it deny care on the basis of some general idea of “crimes”.
The hospital is doing neither. Atkinson wasn’t denied care at that hospital on the basis of speech, but on the basis of criminal harassment of the staff. Nor was he denied care at that hospital on the basis of “some general idea of ‘crimes'”, but because he had committed a specific crime against the staff at that hospital.
Atkinson was banned from receiving treatment at that hospital – you do seem to want to ignore this point – because he had been criminally harassing the staff. He has not, for all his self-pitying comments, been banned from receiving treatment.
You are supposed to FEEL badly about it and THINK that it is wrong.
And perhaps they did, for all you know. The hospital administrator may herself be personally opposed to abortion. She has no power herself to prevent the hospital from providing necessary medical care to all patients, including women who need abortions. And that too is something Atkinson would have known, as he got sacked from one job as a hospital porter after he refused to push a woman into surgery for an abortion. link
Sorry about the double post. I don’t know what happened. Firefox has been playing up, that may be it.
“The court gave him a five-year ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) prohibiting him from sending any such malicious communications to hospitals in the next five years.”
Yes. And it DID NOT bar him from going there for treatment.
Criminals can’t get hip replacements? If true I’m very surprised. Please confirm.
I’m not sure how this has anything to do with what I said, being as it’s clearly not what I said.
Mailing photographs is not the same kind of “abuse”.
If a prisoner was mailing hospital staff of a prison photographs of decapitated corpses, then yes, that’s “abuse”. “Against the law”, even.
If a prisoner mailed to prison doctors, pictures of prisoners beaten and otherwise abused by guards would that be closer to “abuse” or “political statement”?
And it DID NOT bar him from going there for treatment.
The NHS Zero Tolerance Policy can be used — and has been — to bar him from elective treatment at that hospital. At that hospital. I have my doubts about the ZT Policy but warm towards it as you grow more obdurate in your attacks on its implementation in this case!!
In a public school setting I can imagine a student inappropriately sending relgious literature to a teacher (suggesting that they need to repent for example). I do not believe it would be appropriate for the whole school to refuse to teach her.
If it were an offense that were corrected and then resolved, I agree. At the point that a person refuses to correct their behavior, the issue escalates.
I guess we just have fundamental disagreement about whether or not harrassment is a crime. I am not sure why you think violence must be threatened for it to be criminal and, likewise, whether that means things like burning a cross in someone’s yard should be a criminal offense.
Additionally, I don’t understand why you seem to believe that the court is the only entity with the authority to call a halt to interactions between the two parties. If my school only causes a student’s classes to be moved around for harrassing me, what we have taught a student is that your teacher has no rights, dignity nor authority. If you allow this man back into the hospital, you have sent that same message about any staff this man has criminally abused.
Like it or not Mailing photographs is not the same kind of “abuse”. only tells me that what he did is abuse. And abuse, especially repeated abuse, of employees is unnacceptable.
“At the point that a person refuses to correct their behavior, the issue escalates.”
Escalates into what? Simply sending religious tracts to a teacher (even if asked to stop) ought not be a reason to expel someone from a school.
If a prisoner mailed to prison doctors, pictures of prisoners beaten and otherwise abused by guards would that be closer to “abuse” or “political statement”?
If he had been told to cease and desist because his letters were not appreciated not desired, then it would be abuse. It would be harrassment, which is a crime. Just the same as that creepy stalker sending you loving messages about how wonderful you are is abuse. The content is irrelevant. In your example, it might also be a political statement, but that doesn’t mean it is not abuse.
SH,
Why not? It is a criminal act of harrassment perpetrated against a member of that school’s staff. Why is victimizing someone not reason enough for their organization to refuse service to you? WHy is it that you can act in a criminal behavior towards a person through their place of work and still expect to receive any sort of service from that organization. I don’t care how vital the service provided, if you cannot comport yourself well enough to stay within the bounds of the wall, then you have forfeited your right to be served by them.
Would you still feel the same way if they were innappropriate sexual advances that had been requested to stop? Even if the advances offered no threat of assault, only wishful rumination and flattery?
“Why is victimizing someone not reason enough for their organization to refuse service to you?”
Because not all responses to ‘victimization’ are equally appropriate. Shall we agree that a life sentence would be too harsh of a response? Then, I can argue that considering the history of the medical profession and the state action involved in government-run health care refusing medical care is not an appropriate level of response to the mere unwanted sending of pictures with a rather obvious political point. You can disagree with the amount of punishment received, but retreating to ‘victimization’ as if it solved all problems doesn’t answer any questions.
Further I prefer punishments of citizens to be administered by government courts whenever possible.
“Would you still feel the same way if they were innappropriate sexual advances that had been requested to stop? Even if the advances offered no threat of assault, only wishful rumination and flattery?”
Excellent example. If a 16 year old female student made repeated advances to a high school teacher would it be appropriate to remove her from the whole school? No. Does it happen? Maybe. But I don’t think it is appropriate.
On the one hand, a 74-year-old repeat offender moralist unwilling to admit the evident intent of his work. “Educating”, right. Pfeah.
On the other hand, millions of children overcrowding emergency rooms and using resources intended for other kinds of cases, for want of affordable basic care on a regular basis. This is not a problem the children can fix, either; it depends on the actions of adults.
One of these troubles me much, much more than the other.
>If a 16 year old female student made repeated advances to a high school teacher would it be appropriate to remove her from the whole school?
Or course it would. If a student repeatedly breaks a school’s rules and refuses to stop even after warnings have been issued, then it’s completely appropriate for the school to deny her access to that particular school. It’s called being expelled and it rarely requires any sort of judicial oversight.
I’m not sure what your point is here. Denial of access to government services due to bad behavior by isn’t anything shocking or rare. If I were to repeatedly make a nuisance of myself at the local DMV I’m sure that the manager or whoever is in charge would be well within his rights to deny me access to the building.
Just to expland briefly on a point:
Someone who was serious about educating the public about what he saw as the risks and evils of abortion would want to take into account the response he’s getting. All good teaching must include provision for judging the results. If he is repeatedly giving so much offense that his targets wish him jailed, then he is not teaching well, and no quantity of pure intention excuses that failure. His own rationale condemns him.
Now if his aim is something else, then that’s another matter. But what he’s saying does not, as far as I’m concerned, amount to the slightest excuse for his conduct.
Sebastian: Yes. And it DID NOT bar him from going there for treatment.
Since (as far as I know) Atkinson has not attempted to harass the hospital staff in person by violating the hospital‘s ban, it would have been wholly inappropriate for the court to do so. The hospital has, as is their right, removed him from their waiting list because he criminally harassed the staff. If Atkinson then shows up at the hospital and begins to harass the staff in person, at that point a court could act to prevent that behaviour.
In the UK, you see, the legal principle is that a person has to commit an offense before a court can deal with that offense. Atkinson couldn’t be banned from the hospital by court order until he violates the hospital’s request for him to stay away.
Bruce, “If he is repeatedly giving so much offense that his targets wish him jailed, then he is not teaching well, and no quantity of pure intention excuses that failure. His own rationale condemns him.”
Does that apply to say anti-Vietnam War protestors?
Jesurgislac, “In the UK, you see, the legal principle is that a person has to commit an offense before a court can deal with that offense. Atkinson couldn’t be banned from the hospital by court order until he violates the hospital’s request for him to stay away.”
I don’t believe that is an accurate representation of UK law. Even in the 1700s courts in the UK could have ruled as I outlined. It is theoretically possible that they have had that power yanked from them, but I really think I would have heard of it.
Yes, Sebastian, I’ve written many times over the years that I think the worthiness of the cause in the protestor’s mind should force an elevation of the means, not justify their degredation. Protest should aim to be effective; if it doesn’t, then the participants should skip the public scene and go straight to the masturbation, which is cheaper and consumes fewer resources.
Not caring about results is a luxury for those who don’t actually care if their cause gets anywhere.
Sebastian: Then, I can argue that considering the history of the medical profession and the state action involved in government-run health care refusing medical care is not an appropriate level of response
…which is irrelevant, since he hasn’t been refused medical care…
to the mere unwanted sending of pictures
…to the crime of repeated harassment by malicious communications…
with a rather obvious political point.
Actually, it would appear that far from being political, Edward Atkinson’s campaign is religious. I know that in the US the two are frequently blurred, but there is actually a clear distinction between the two in British law – for example, it is anyone’s right under British law to hand out political material on the public street, but unless you have specific permission from the police (or a licence from the local council) you do not have the right to hand out non-political material, which includes religious material.
Edward Atkinson’s feeling about abortion appears to be religious, not political – as one might figure, since he’s not trying to get local voters to write to their MPs or to local councillors, but apparently trying to get hospital staff to repent, or at least to feel revulsion.
Bruce: If he is repeatedly giving so much offense that his targets wish him jailed, then he is not teaching well, and no quantity of pure intention excuses that failure. His own rationale condemns him.
Much like Sebastian, I’m not convinced this holds at the margins. Preaching abolitionism in the South antebellum, or civil rights in the postbellum one, both seem to be (fairly straightforward) failures of this doctrine, as do most things Godwinizable.
Sebastian: I don’t believe that is an accurate representation of UK law. Even in the 1700s courts in the UK could have ruled as I outlined. It is theoretically possible that they have had that power yanked from them, but I really think I would have heard of it.
I really think you’re misunderstanding the legal principle involved.
Atkinson committed crimes of malicious communication, of which the court could (and did) convict him. Because the offense he had committed was harassment by mail, the court could (and did) give him an Asbo requiring him not to repeat this behavior.
In order for the court to issue a restraining order barring Atkinson from the hospital, two steps are necessary: first, the hospital would have to formally notify Atkinson that, except for emergency medical treatment, he was not to enter the hospital. This the hospital has done. Then, if Atkinson attempts to enter the hospital despite the hospital’s request for him to stay away, a court can issue a restraining order against him. Does this really strike you as an odd or unusual way of going about things?
>If a 16 year old female student made repeated advances to a high school teacher would it be appropriate to remove her from the whole school?
Geez, at my high school, it was zero tolerance. Students wearing clothes that advertised beer or were unacceptable to the principal were sent home and weren’t allowed to come back if they were wearing the same or a similar shirt. Removed from the whole school.
Ah, the good old days. I guess conservatives just don’t think much about them…
I feel like the point of this post ought to be that once you criminalize this sort of behavior, which SH feels should not be a crime, then you create unfortunate side effects like keeping people from receiving their government health care. At least, it seems like that ought to be the point, but apparently it’s not.
I assume in the hypothetical case where the guy committed a “real” crime against the hospital staff – let’s say he stabbed one of the administrators, and did his time – it would be ok for the hospital to exclude him from the premises. Or am I wrong?
But the reason we apparently keep going in circles is that some people accept this guy’s conduct as a crime, and argue that it’s fine to deny hospital services to someone who commits a crime against the hospital, while SH believes that the guy’s conduct shouldn’t be a crime and that it’s just an expression of a political viewpoint.
I’m not the first person to make this observation but we don’t seem to be spending any time discussing the threshold issue of whether we think this guy’s conduct should really be a crime. If we somehow came to agreement on that, I’m not sure we’d have much left to argue about.
“Because the offense he had committed was harassment by mail, the court could (and did) give him an Asbo requiring him not to repeat this behavior.
In order for the court to issue a restraining order barring Atkinson from the hospital, two steps are necessary: first, the hospital would have to formally notify Atkinson that, except for emergency medical treatment, he was not to enter the hospital. This the hospital has done. Then, if Atkinson attempts to enter the hospital despite the hospital’s request for him to stay away, a court can issue a restraining order against him. Does this really strike you as an odd or unusual way of going about things?”
Yes. If the Judge believed Atkinson was a threat to the hospital he could have ordered him not to engage in any dealings with the hospital at the time of sentencing. If the hospital believed he was a threat they could have requested the same at that time. Of course the hospital isn’t claiming he is a threat even now.
Steve: I feel like the point of this post ought to be that once you criminalize this sort of behavior, which SH feels should not be a crime, then you create unfortunate side effects like keeping people from receiving their government health care. At least, it seems like that ought to be the point, but apparently it’s not.
It might be the point if Atkinson was being kept from receiving health care, but, after all, he’s not.
Anarch: Okay, good point. Sometimes better results aren’t to be had. But it’s important to ask the question of oneself, and from available accounts, he isn’t, he’s just saying that his intentions were good so this is other people’s problems.
“But the reason we apparently keep going in circles is that some people accept this guy’s conduct as a crime, and argue that it’s fine to deny hospital services to someone who commits a crime against the hospital, while SH believes that the guy’s conduct shouldn’t be a crime and that it’s just an expression of a political viewpoint.
I’m not the first person to make this observation but we don’t seem to be spending any time discussing the threshold issue of whether we think this guy’s conduct should really be a crime.”
No.
Even if we accept that this ought to be a crime, it is not a given that all possible punishments are ok for all possible crimes.
A) I don’t believe it ought to be a crime.
But accepting that the US idea of free speech is very expansive and that other countries have a more limited idea of it,
B) I think that even if it is a crime, it isn’t a fitting punishment to prolong health care based on speech (even unwanted).
and
C) even if that is a fitting punishment, it should be a punishment imposed by a court not just an administrative decision by the offended hospital administrator.
Note I say “punishment”. The hospital administration has not alleged that he is a threat.
it is anyone’s right under British law to hand out political material on the public street, but unless you have specific permission from the police (or a licence from the local council) you do not have the right to hand out non-political material, which includes religious material.
Now this is interesting. Jes, could you expand on this or point me towards an explanation? Was it an attempt to control commercial speech?
Well, SH, it seems like you’re saying “even if it’s a crime, it’s still just speech,” which is sort of a roundabout way of saying it shouldn’t be called a crime at all. To the others in this thread, if it’s a crime then it’s a crime, which is why we’re not finding common ground.
I did say above that I think it would make more sense to require the hospital to get a court order before denying treatment to someone, as a general matter.
Sebastian: Yes. If the Judge believed Atkinson was a threat to the hospital he could have ordered him not to engage in any dealings with the hospital at the time of sentencing.
Um… no. At this point, Atkinson is guilty of malicious communications. Under British law, the judge cannot issue a restraining order against behavior which the defendent has not yet committed. Really, honestly, and truly, Sebastian, it’s so. I’m surprised that in the US it’s possible for a judge to issue a restraining order in advance of the subject of the order actually committing the offense against which the restraining order is issued – can you link me to an example of this kind of restriction – a court order preventing someone from an action the court thinks they might commit even though they haven’t done it yet?
It’s a significant problem dealing with stalkers/serial harassers, in fact: in order for the court to prohibit them from committing an offense, they have to actually commit the offense.
I’m surprised that in the US it’s possible for a judge to issue a restraining order in advance of the subject of the order actually committing the offense against which the restraining order is issued
Well, for example, the Michigan statute which governs personal protective orders says the following:
The court shall issue a personal protection order under this section if the court determines that there is reasonable cause to believe that the individual to be restrained or enjoined may commit 1 or more of the acts listed in subsection (1). In determining whether reasonable cause exists, the court shall consider all of the following:
(a) Testimony, documents, or other evidence offered in support of the request for a personal protection order.
(b) Whether the individual to be restrained or enjoined has previously committed or threatened to commit 1 or more of the acts listed in subsection (1).
So whether the person has previously committed the act in question is certainly an important factor to be considered; but it’s not a required element.
Jackmormon: Now this is interesting. Jes, could you expand on this or point me towards an explanation? Was it an attempt to control commercial speech?
In general, you are not allowed to stand around on the public highway (sidewalk or road) obstructing traffic, unless it’s a political demonstration or you’re handing out political material (or you’ve got permission from the police/a licence from the local council). The principle is that distributing political material is protected, but distributing any other material is not. If you receive a religious tract on the street in the UK, it’s likely to be from someone walking briskly by, since if they stop to hand it to you they are, in theory, committing an offense.
Steve: Well, SH, it seems like you’re saying “even if it’s a crime, it’s still just speech,” which is sort of a roundabout way of saying it shouldn’t be called a crime at all.
Actually, what Sebastian seems to be saying is that telling someone that they can’t go to one hospital because they’ve harassed the staff there, but will have to go to another hospital instead, is “punishment”.
@SH:
Atkinson, who was jailed for four weeks, enclosed the offensive pictures with replies to routine inquiries from the hospital.
When managers complained that secretaries who opened his letters had been upset by the contents […]
I think this is a point worth making. He was not simply mailing the offending photos piecemail to administrative staff. He was enclosing them in corrospondence that the staff would have to open and read in order to provide service to him. Hence, the staff had no way of “opting-out” of recieving the harrassment without also refusing him treatment. As long as they were treating him, they would presumably be required to corrospond with him. The only way of shielding the harrassed personel from the harrasser in this case would be to alter the circumstances such that the personel would no longer be obliged to read corropsondence from him except as absolutely required by dire necessity. Which presumably would entail refusing him non-essential treatment.
Given the nature of the harrassing behavior (which as noted, was targeting people who were not necessarily capable of even superficially altering hosptial policy; this makes it IMO far easier to characterize his behavior as purely harrassment, particularly given the staff’s limited recourse in avoiding such, well, abuse), I don’t think it would be inappropriate to draw an analogy between what he was doing and accosting random hospital staff in the corridors of the facility to thrust unasked photographs into their faces. One expects that the latter behavior would get him warned, then removed from the premises. One also suspects in that case you would not object so strongly to the facility refusing to allow him to return for less than life-threatening reasons. Given that he was enclosing these photographs in corrospondence that the staff was required to read, I don’t see how this analogy would be inappropriate…
Steve: So whether the person has previously committed the act in question is certainly an important factor to be considered; but it’s not a required element.
But, presumably, it is a required element that the person has been notified that the act in question is unwelcome, yes? You appear to be arguing that the first step in telling someone that they’re not wanted has got to be a court order – according to what you’re saying, the person being harassed isn’t allowed just to tell the person doing the harassment to stay away, because only a court can do that. Is that right?
Actually, what Sebastian seems to be saying is that telling someone that they can’t go to one hospital because they’ve harassed the staff there, but will have to go to another hospital instead, is “punishment”.
Well, that’s a separate point. It seems to me that the argument presumes human beings to be incapable of making distinctions; if we accept the right of a pharmacy to turn a customer away for harassing the pharmacy’s employees, we must also accept their right to turn a customer away for religious reasons. Personally I don’t quite see the logic.
You appear to be arguing that the first step in telling someone that they’re not wanted has got to be a court order – according to what you’re saying, the person being harassed isn’t allowed just to tell the person doing the harassment to stay away, because only a court can do that. Is that right?
I think the analogy between the personal and business scenarios breaks down a little here. In the personal scenario, of course you’re allowed to tell someone to not bother you any longer, and then wait and see what they do, if you feel like it.
But when you operate a business that is presumed to be open to the public, if you tell someone that they’re not welcome, that statement is tantamount to a denial of services. I think it would be a better system if they had to get a court order before denying someone services, at least in this situation. If you think there’s a difference between the hospital telling the guy not to come by any more, and actually denying him services, you need to explain to me what you mean.
It seems to that the extent of the injury isn’t really known (here). Is there a longer waiting list at all the near spots? How much trouble is it for him to get there?
Assuming that the ban at the facility he was using imposes a non-trivial level of harm, and assuming that the guy wasn’t an actual threat, I guess I’m still of the view that the NHS professionals ought to suck it up, and treat the guy.
Businesses have a right to refuse service to anyone in most countries, as long as it’s not done in violation of anti-discrimination laws. It’s generally known as the “Shopkeeper’s Right to Refuse”.
Of course, we’re talking about hospital. But since Atkinson hasn’t been denied medical treatment, the point is moot…..
It seems to that the extent of the injury isn’t really known (here).
Correct.
Is there a longer waiting list at all the near spots?
Don’t know; but I’m fairly sure there’ll be a way of arranging it so he doesn’t have to wait substantially longer.
How much trouble is it for him to get there?
Again, no idea. He may well be entitled to free transport there provided by the NHS.
There are quite a number of hospitals pretty close to the Queen Elizabeth.
What he did is bad enough under the British system (on the whole a lot less harsh than the US system) to send a 74 year old man to jail for over a month. You can argue about how you don’t think sending pictures should be punished that harshly, but since no one knows *what* exactly he sent, and to whom, we have to assume it is pretty bad to warrant this punishment.
Different countries have different laws and quite a number of those seem silly to foreigners. I mean… going to prison for selling sex toys???? But that is a different discussion from wether a hospital can refuse someone who commited a crime against them – if that person does not have something life threatening and if that person knowingly commited the crime.
My husband was kicked out by his new dentist when he was to late for the second time. Which I thought was stupid, but I never assumed they were not entitled to do that. This is way more serious that being late, and the offender was fully aware of the consequences. I don’t have a problem with him facing them than, especially since there are plenty of options for treatment left.
I’ve not had direct contact with it, but I think of the NHS as something more like the DMV than like the 7/11. I’m sure I’ll be corrected on that, if I’m way off base.
We’re talking in circles because we don’t know enough facts.
We don’t know exactly what Atkinson sent. We don’t know how long he was running his harrassment campaign. We don’t know how easy it would be for him to get his hip surgery elsewhere.
We don’t know enough about how British law defines harrassment, criminal harrassment, or whether there are different thresholds for different situations (e.g., handing out photos of abortions and fetuses in the public square, at one’s place of employment, at service provider offices, at hospitals).
Since we don’t know, we have to fill in the blanks, and compare the Atkinson case to other situations that seem parallel.
There’s some law of diminishing returns at work here, I think 🙂
“There’s some law of diminishing returns at work here, I think :)”
There’s a reason I had only about one comment on substance here, and that it was yesterday.
@CharleyCarp: Are you at liberty to say more about the pictures-to-Gitmo-big-trouble situation?
Bruce: But it’s important to ask the question of oneself, and from available accounts, he isn’t, he’s just saying that his intentions were good so this is other people’s problems.
I completely agree on this, which is why (irrespective of the legal concerns) I don’t have much sympathy for him.
Excellent example. If a 16 year old female student made repeated advances to a high school teacher would it be appropriate to remove her from the whole school? No. Does it happen? Maybe. But I don’t think it is appropriate.
Okay, at least that settles for me where we can see no common ground. Innappropriate advances towards anyone in the building are unnacceptable in my view. If a student or anyone else has been warned against such advances, then the offender should be removed from the system if they do not desist. It seems that we must disagree on the harm caused by unwanted attentions, even of the best kinds. Sexual harrassment really is a nasty problem with many far-ranging effects. Teachers are no less affected by them than anyone else. The fact that teachers are often willing to tolerate higher levels of abuse (of any kind) does not mean that they are obligated to do so. If we have forgotten that, it is no wonder we have such a hard time finding teachers.
Further I prefer punishments of citizens to be administered by government courts whenever possible.
Whenever someone punches me, I don’t need the cops to tell them not to talk to me anymore. I can simply inform them that they are no longer welcome in my presence and that any relationship we have had before that time is now null in void.
Nombrilisme Vide, excellently said. Hope to hear more from you in the future, even when your incisive analysis cuts against me ;-}
“…null in void.”
Typo?
“Whenever someone punches me, I don’t need the cops to tell them not to talk to me anymore.”
The whole thing I’m trying to talk about is that not all forms of ‘abuse’ are the same as punching.
I don’t see why you seem so keen to force crime victims to perform surgery on their abuser for no good reason, especially given that doing so will give the criminal more opportunities to offend.
The man won’t lose out too much by going to another hospital. If he needs care in an emergency, the original hospital will provide it.
Where is the problem here? A criminal will
maybe spend an extra few months on a waiting list, depending on the transfer arrangements.
Steve: But when you operate a business that is presumed to be open to the public, if you tell someone that they’re not welcome, that statement is tantamount to a denial of services. I think it would be a better system if they had to get a court order before denying someone services, at least in this situation.
So in your view it’s better to assume the worst at once – to assume that Atkinson won’t stay away from the hospital voluntarily given that the hospital has lawfully requested him to do so – and leap directly to the sledgehammer of a court order?
Sebastian: The whole thing I’m trying to talk about is that not all forms of ‘abuse’ are the same as punching.
Actually, what you seem over the whole thread to be arguing is that this particular form of abuse is something that the hospital staff aren’t entitled to defend themselves from – that when a hospital provides all necessary health services to women, which naturally includes abortion, the staff have got to accept this kind of anti-choice, harassment from the public without legal redress.
“[…] ungrateful scumwads who were busy trying to tear down the sort of society that made their existence possible, on one scale or another.”
I was just rolling over this text with my eyes, you know, and suddenly I saw this, the kind of stuff I’m used to seeing from right-wing sites about misty-eyed liberals and so on.
Reality check here: this man is opposed to abortion. Do you think that means you can place him politically? Think again. Party lines are not drawn on that issue alone, not even in the US. Here in Norway, although there is one party which is opposed to the abortion law, we have abortion opponents in all represented parties. Even the leftmost, SV, has a couple of profiled pro-lifers.
How exactly does being opposed to abortion, even to the point of sending graphic images to hospital administrative staff, tear down the society that makes his existence possible?
“Maybe the society I want would be a little stronger now if so many good people hadn’t burned out trying to help those who had no intention of doing their part.”
Bruce, this man does his part – in creating the society he wants, which he thinks is necessary, in the long term, for making the existence of people like you possible. He may well think you a “scumwad”, too. Assuming that he therefore wouldn’t stand up for you, that’s just prejudice.
CharleyCarp: It seems to that the extent of the injury isn’t really known (here). Is there a longer waiting list at all the near spots? How much trouble is it for him to get there?
Assuming that the ban at the facility he was using imposes a non-trivial level of harm, and assuming that the guy wasn’t an actual threat, I guess I’m still of the view that the NHS professionals ought to suck it up, and treat the guy.
Okay, I guess Sebastian has introduced a real level of confusion here.
I’ve linked to a number of UK news stories about this incident (mostly in local papers, so the links may suffer from linkrot within a week, but they should still be OK right now).
All of the stories make clear that Edward Atkinson was on a waitlist at the hospital whose staff he was harassing for an appointment to see a specialist to have his need for a hip replacement assessed.
If he had been currently undergoing treatment at the hospital, it would have been much more difficult (rightly so) to transfer him from the hospital, and given the level of harassment, the NHS professionals would likely have “sucked it up” and let him finish his treatment there.
But he wasn’t undergoing treatment there; he was waiting for an appointment. He has been (or will be) transferred to a waitlist at another hospital to see another specialist, quite possibly even the same specialist if it’s the same NHS Trust area – and his wide reputation in the area as a troublemaker (one of the stories mentions thirteen previous similar incidents – likely to be his police-blotter record rather than his conviction record – hospitals tend to proceed to court as a last resort) means any delay is likely to be finding a local hospital which doesn’t provide gynaecological services so that he has no excuse to harass the staff there.
I admit that the Times is scaremongering – it’s the most irresponsible of right-wing broadsheets, one step up from a tabloid – but Sebastian has ignored everything he’s been told by people who know more than he does about the NHS, all down this thread.
We know – those of us who have read the local news stories which I linked to – that his “injury” is not serious – he’s waiting for an assessment appointment, not for treatment – and we know (those of us who are familiar with the NHS procedures, which have been linked to from this thread) that he’ll suffer no discernable harm from having to go to another hospital for his appointment.
If the hospital he goes to has a shorter waitlist than the one he has just been banned from, or if they decide to move him up it faster to get him off their hands faster because he’s a ruddy troublemaker, he may even get seen sooner than he would have had he stuck to legal methods of protest. (Also, while the local “pro-life” group has disowned him in disgust, according to local news reports, a national “pro-life” group might respond to the Times story by donating money to let him be seen privately. Or not: he’s no credit to the anti-choicers, and in the UK, the mainstream anti-choice movement is sane enough to recognise this.)
Harald,
I don’t think you should take Bruce’s comment as being entirely or even partially reflective of his position on abortion, as it sounds much more like reference to personal energy devoted to causes where the person being defended failed to rise to expectations. I know that I have been involved with some cases where I and others have worked to assist people with labor complaints only to find that after we had made commitments of our time and energy, their loyalty to the cause waned, leaving us holding the bag, and despite the principles involved in defending them, with hindsight, I may not have lifted a finger to help. Please also remember that this has been a confused and divisive thread, with hypotheses and conjectures strewn by the handful. That Bruce makes a strong statement should charitably be viewed as a reflection of that confusion rather than of his personal feelings.
Harald: I’m passing judgment specifically on the combination of persisting in sending people stuff the sender knows they find upsetting and unwelcome, and rationalizing it in terms that excuse him from responsibility for results, and then having someone say (in essence) that his targets have no right to a reaction and should be expected to act as though he weren’t trying to sabotage their effectiveness. For all I know or care he’s sincere in thinking he’s educating them and nothing more – the point is that readily observable facts are against him, because people who are being educated and learning to see the world in other terms don’t express their gratitude by repeatedly invoking the law against him. He has an obligation to know that what he’s doing isn’t working, precisely like anyone else with a cause.
And scroll back through the thread to see why I’m rather emotional about the moment specifically when it comes to things that run a real risk of making health care less efficient or effective than it would otherwise be.
So in your view it’s better to assume the worst at once – to assume that Atkinson won’t stay away from the hospital voluntarily given that the hospital has lawfully requested him to do so – and leap directly to the sledgehammer of a court order?
Uh, the entire point of seeking a court order is to determine whether it’s “lawful” for the hospital to inform the guy that his business is no longer welcome.
Why am I not surprised that the pro-abortion zealots on this thread refuse to see either 1) the free speech issues here, or 2) the wrongfulness of denying medical care? In any other context, they wouldn’t so blithely agree that it’s a “crime,” or a form of “abuse,” merely to send someone pictures of Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib or animal experimentation, etc. Indeed, pro-abortion zealots (like Jes) are usually snidely dismissive of abortion-related pictures, with comments like, “All surgery is gruesome.” And in any other context, pro-abortion advocates would be up in arms if a health care provider (such as a pharmacist) denied medical care to someone based on disagreement with that person’s political views.
Say that a woman heard that a pharmacy was going to allow its pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And say that she sent a couple of letters to the pharmacy with pictures of women who died in illegal abortions after being refused contraceptions.
Now say that 1) the women is thrown in jail, and 2) the pharmacy refuses to serve her at all. Would folks like Jes so happily say, “Yes, she’s guilty of a crime. The victimized and abused pharmacists have every right to exclude her”?
Steve: Uh, the entire point of seeking a court order is to determine whether it’s “lawful” for the hospital to inform the guy that his business is no longer welcome.
Did you miss the links upthread to NHS procedures/guidelines? It is lawful in the UK for a hospital to determine they will no longer have a member of the public who has been abusing staff on their waiting lists. You’re saying that you believe hospitals shouldn’t be allowed to protect their staff unless they can get a court order permitting them to do so?
Niels: Why am I not surprised that the pro-abortion zealots on this thread refuse to see either 1) the free speech issues here, or 2) the wrongfulness of denying medical care?
Why am I not surprised to see you joining Sebastian in the fight to abuse hospital staff and call it “free speech”? (But do quit claiming that Edward Atkinson is being “denied medical care”. He isn’t.)
Say that a woman heard that a pharmacy was going to allow its pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And say that she sent a couple of letters to the pharmacy with pictures of women who died in illegal abortions after being refused contraceptions.
Good analogy, Niels! Let’s suppose that a major pharmacy in the US – Wal-Mart – had decided that none of its branches, anywhere in the US, would sell contraception.
Then suppose that Edwina Atkinson was harassing employees at one local branch with pictures of women dead from illegal abortions, and that the employees had asked her to stop and she had refused. While you and Sebastian would doubtless argue that she has every right to promote her political opinions, and the staff at that pharmacy should just put up with her harassment and continue to serve her, I would say that she is guilty of harassment, that the pharmacy has a right to ban her from that branch for everything except emergencies, and that – if the US had a law permitting it, which according to Sebastian it doesn’t – she ought to be prosecuted for malicious communication, if she just wouldn’t stop harassing the pharmacy staff.
“All of the stories make clear that Edward Atkinson was on a waitlist at the hospital whose staff he was harassing for an appointment to see a specialist to have his need for a hip replacement assessed.”
Please quote them. The links you provided say things like:
Where are you getting the idea that he had just started his relationship with the hospital?
Frankly, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you would agree that such pictures constitute “harassment,” or that such a person should be thrown in jail.
Is Edwina going to a government-run pharmacy? The VA maybe?
“But do quit claiming that Edward Atkinson is being “denied medical care”. He isn’t.”
Funny. The links you want to rely upon say:
“Union officials have defended the decision of a Norfolk hospital to deny treatment to a pensioner who sent pictures of mutilated babies to its staff.”
It is lawful in the UK for a hospital to determine they will no longer have a member of the public who has been abusing staff on their waiting lists. You’re saying that you believe hospitals shouldn’t be allowed to protect their staff unless they can get a court order permitting them to do so?
I am saying that there would be less chance of someone being wrongfully denied health care if a court order were required, as opposed to letting the hospital make the determination unilaterally.
These situations presumably don’t come up all that often. It shouldn’t be much of a burden to say that if a public hospital wants to exclude someone from care, they should get a court order saying they are entitled to do so.
Frankly, I don’t believe you.
That’s your problem. Niels came up with an excellent analogy: in both cases, Atkinson (Edward or Edwina) is harassing people who cannot do a thing about the issue that Atkinson is protesting against.
Frankly, I don’t believe you’d support Edwina, for all your claims to believe in free speech.
Funny. The links you want to rely upon say:
“Union officials have defended the decision of a Norfolk hospital to deny treatment to a pensioner who sent pictures of mutilated babies to its staff.”
Yes, Sebastian. As has been repeatedly pointed out to you all the way down this thread, and as you are evidently still ignoring, Atkinson is not being denied treatment: he’s being denied access to this hospital. As has been repeatedly pointed out to you all the way down the thread, he can receive treatment at any other hospital. Just not at this one. Somehow I don’t find your rigorous refusal to admit the facts all that funny.
Steve: I am saying that there would be less chance of someone being wrongfully denied health care if a court order were required, as opposed to letting the hospital make the determination unilaterally.
If there were the risk that anyone was being denied health care, which isn’t a factor in this situation, I would agree with you. But as there isn’t, this point seems to be irrelevant.
It shouldn’t be much of a burden to say that if a public hospital wants to exclude someone from care, they should get a court order saying they are entitled to do so.
As you would know if you’d followed the links, one of the guidelines to be followed is that the person being excluded from that hospital has to be able to obtain care elsewhere. To actually exclude someone from health care would indeed require a court order, but that’s not relevant in this situation.
Could you guys argue gun control next?
And then which is better: Mac or Windows?
It will be equally productive, and new. I’m sure lots of people will learn much they didn’t previously know, just as they have from this discussion, and it will all be a terribly productive use of your time.
Lily hit it on the head yesterday in her comment at 2:11, and people might have found it a good idea to take their cue from that comment.
It’s not too late.
Yeeesh. Can’t everybody agree that he’s being denied treatment at hospital X but offered treatment at all other hospitals in England? I think it’s ridiculous to say that he’s being denied treatment tout court, but it’s even more ridiculous to be going around and around on this.
Rilkefan: Can’t everybody agree that he’s being denied treatment at hospital X but offered treatment at all other hospitals in England?
What, Sebastian Holsclaw climb down and admit he got suckered by a combination of a pro-life site and the Times? If that was going to happen, it would have happened yesterday. This the Sebastian Holsclaw who went on and on insisting that there was no information about late-term abortions in the US, after having been presented several times over with links to tables and tables of CDC data on late-term abortions in the US.
No, I think what SH is saying is strictly true – it’s just he’s playing on metonymy to argue against those using the much more standard way of understanding what something like “deny” means. Why he’s doing so is beyond me – maybe because people don’t seem to get my point above.
And I think he’s right about the lack of _useful_ data reflecting on his argument in the late-term abortion case.
“This the Sebastian Holsclaw who went on and on insisting that there was no information about late-term abortions in the US, after having been presented several times over with links to tables and tables of CDC data on late-term abortions in the US.”
Classic Jesurgislac misreading. I complain about the lack of data on the REASONS for late term abortions and a lack of verification of the very sparse reports of the REASONS for late term abortions and she pretends that tables on the NUMBER of late-term abortions are dispositive.
He is being denied treatment at the hospital. His treatment is being delayed by forcing him to start again on the wait lists at another hospital. This delays medical treatment that would not otherwise be delayed. The delay is likely to be in the 9-12 month range (from statistics I have already pointed to) and is thus a very noticeable delay. This was refered to as a denial in the context of pharmacy refusals to dispense EC despite the fact that there are other pharmacies in the US and Jesurgislac wasn’t so careful about the term there so you’ll get no apology from me (especially when all of the news reports INCLUDING the friendly-to-the-hospital ones that Jesurgislac links to mention a denial of care or a denial of treatment). Saying that you would normally treat someone for a painful condition soon, but because they ‘abused’ you with pictures of fetuses you will let them try to get treatment in nine months somewhere else is a denial of treatment.
However this argument would be good if you could back it up, because it suggests that he isn’t being forced to wait very long:
“All of the stories make clear that Edward Atkinson was on a waitlist at the hospital whose staff he was harassing for an appointment to see a specialist to have his need for a hip replacement assessed.”
Once again, can you back it up?
“The delay is likely to be”
Once again, can you back it up?
Personally, I see at least two people on different sides who long since passed any interest in trying to convince the other — which they pretty well didn’t have in the first place, I suspect, though that’s mindreading on my part, so I lose two points — but whom are simply being stubborn and utterly unwilling to admit that the other might have even the slightest point, and equally unwilling to back down in even the slightest, and thus are producing a thread that has long consisted of nothing beyond pure repetition (and for me, utter boredom, but I can always stop reading, of course).
If you kids find this fun, far be it for me to get in your way, but I think you’ve both crossed the line of making rear ends of yourselves. Though maybe as long as the other also looks that way, and you’re convinced that it’s more than you do, you’re happy.
I’d look for a way to cut the Gordian knot, or walk away, were I you, but obviously I’m not (and at least one party is entirely grateful for that, while the other is probably at least partially).
Sebastian, you had a reasonable point when you started, with the information then available to youbut you’ve largely ignored later discussion and later information, and the question of whether you’re simply against British (specifically English) law on this, and the chance to more narrowly and profitably focus the discussion, and would have been better off backing away by yesterday.
Jes, you’ve made a number of valid points, but your triumphalism, and seemly primary interest in Proving Sebastian Wrong, cover you with no glory, either.
I say both sides should go to their room for a time-out now, and drop the subject.
But I only speak for myself, and don’t exactly expect to be Obeyed.
And personally, I’m glad to see Sebastian post; he should do more, even if I disagree with him. And Slart should come back. And even Charles might want to risk posting again, though I’ll certainly wallop him if I think he makes a whopper. But, you know, nicely.
I Have Spoken. Now, go ignore me like I expect. (Or not. Not is always an option.)
Gary‘s right.
“”The delay is likely to be”
Once again, can you back it up?”
I already linked to that. May 16, 8:22. See how easy it is.
SH,I>The links you provided say things like:
” Lynn hospital bosses are standing by their decision to refuse treatment to a Hilgay pensioner waiting for a hip replacement,”
The first piece you quoted, Sebastian, says
Since the court case, Mr. Atkinson has been removed from the hospital’s wait list for an evaluation for hip surgery and has been banned from anything other than life-saving treatment…
so with immediate effect, he’s been denied assessment at that hospital to see whether he needs treatment for a hip problem, and if so, what treatment. Therefore he’s also been denied the subsequent treatment (if needed) at that hospital, and any further elective evalution and treatment at that hospital.
Alternatively, the Times story is wrong and he was on a post-assessment list for a hip replacement op.. But The Scotsman says the same thing. (But then they and The Times have copied the same story… .)
Does this matter? Yes. It’s easier to switch a patient to a different assessment list than to switch them for treatment. Less disruption for the patient is involved.
However it would be best probably to agree, as Rilkefan suggests, that he is being (will be) denied elective treatment at one hospital here in the UK, but not (so far) at any other hospital.
What if they all decided they wouldn’t treat him? The relevant regulatory body would step in and force one of them to treat him. So, well, yes, there’s government regulation involved here, but not in the way Sebastian suggests.
The nonchalance from some of us here stems from a belief that this man will be evaluated and treated by an NHS hospital (or a private one if someone wants to pay) without massive extra delay. If there were undue delay for treatment, then he could be treated elsewhere in Europe at the NHS’s expense. (Recent ECHR judgement.)
A note on waiting lists in England. They’ve dropped dramatically since 2004.
And now, a new example of NHS denial of treatment
Independent
Gary Farber FTW!
The entire problem with this discussion is its reliance on biased information as presented by the sources used by SH.
The real story is that the hospital decided that after a patient was convicted of a crime against the hospital staff the staff decided that it would be better for all involved if the criminal sought further treatment elsewhere.
If you go to the hospital web site you will find it specifically stated that one of their measurement criteria is to provide a safe environment for patients and staff alike.
Secondly, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, just an honest critic, to realize that this guy would be a less hostile patient at a hosptital that did not provide abortions. Or if that could not be arranged, at a hospital he had no prior criminal trouble with. So for his own good the hospital is arranging for his treatment elsewhere.
That SH does not see that this is for the patients own good is just typical of the conservative mindset that cannot think beyond their talking points.
“That SH does not see that this is for the patients own good is just typical of the conservative mindset that cannot think beyond their talking points.”
Are you sure your response isn’t just typical of the liberal minset that it is inherently good to do whatever the government says and unthinkingly derides those who disagree?
Or perhaps that isn’t a fair characterization of the liberal mindset?
SH, as I noted above, you don’t seem to understand that you’re not calculating a delay but a relative delay.
Consider a queue. Let’s say it’s always 10 minutes long. After 2 minutes standing on line, X picks a fight with Y and is forced to go to the back of the line. You say X is being denied service, then you say X is being punished with a 10-minute delay. I say to myself, [deleted].
Then someone notes that there are actually multiple queues, and someone asks if queue standing is tranferable, and you again say X is being denied service, and forced to wait 10 minutes. I say to myself, [censored].
Sorry. The lifesite story Sebastian quoted says (see his post) that Atkinson’s been removed from the waiting list for evaluation. The Scotsman copied that story.
SH
Saying that you would normally treat someone for a painful condition soon, but because they ‘abused’ you with pictures of fetuses you will let them try to get treatment in nine months somewhere else is a denial of treatment.
I see no evidence that the hospital ever said anything like that. I.e. they never said they would treat him soon and indeed they could not say that as they don’t know — I assume — whether or not he needs treatment. Nor is “try to get treatment elsewhere” entirely accurate as he is entitled to evaluation and following that, treatment, under the NHS but not necessarily at the hospital of his choice. “In nine months”, well, we don’t know. I would think an additional delay of nine months could not be justified and so he could sue under the Human Rights Act.
As you would know if you’d followed the links, one of the guidelines to be followed is that the person being excluded from that hospital has to be able to obtain care elsewhere. To actually exclude someone from health care would indeed require a court order, but that’s not relevant in this situation.
First of all, I absolutely hate the all-too-common sanctimonious phrasing that says “you obviously didn’t follow my awesome links.” I completely understand that the guy is free to go to another hospital. You’re quibbling over word choice.
Yes, denying someone access to a particular hospital isn’t a denial of all health care, but it’s not nothing, either. Presumably, you’re not a fan of fundamentalist pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions, even if there’s another pharmacy two blocks down. That’s not to say that the justifications are equally reasonable, but the results are quite similar. You can’t pretend like it’s a meaningful harm in one case and a meaningless harm in another, when your beef is simply with the justification.
In my view, government hospitals should be presumptively open to everyone. We both agree, I think, that access should not be denied without good cause. You think it’s fine to let the government hospital determine when good cause exists; I think the potential for unfair decisions would be less if courts made the determination instead. All we’re really arguing about is which arm of the government is in the best position to make that call, so please stop acting as if my position is utterly frivolous as I’d see if I only clicked your magical links.
I don’t know whether Jayann’s answer will satisfy Sebastian. If not, then probably this won’t either:
“As a result of the decision, Atkinson was struck-off a waiting list for an assessment for hip treatment.”
Presumably, you’re not a fan of fundamentalist pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions, even if there’s another pharmacy two blocks down.
No, but I would support a pharmacist (fundamentalist or secular) refusing to serve a customer who was abusing their staff.
You think it’s fine to let the government hospital determine when good cause exists; I think the potential for unfair decisions would be less if courts made the determination instead.
The court has determined that Atkinson was abusing the hospital’s staff.
what Farber said at 12:31p. Not ObWi’s finest hour.
“Then someone notes that there are actually multiple queues, and someone asks if queue standing is tranferable, and you again say X is being denied service, and forced to wait 10 minutes.”
If it was measured in minutes not months I wouldn’t be as concerned.
But since it appears to be for the assessment and not the treatment (thank you Kevin), the harm doesn’t appear to be as serious so while I think the hospital is wrong to deny treatment the case isn’t as bad as it looked to me intially.
I think Jayann tried to link to this story – a genuinely disturbing case.
Sebastian, I’m delighted you’re able to accept the facts – finally. Less delighted that apparently you will only read links when posted by a man, since you wouldn’t believe the same information – indeed, the same link! – when I posted it.
“Less delighted that apparently you will only read links when posted by a man, since you wouldn’t believe the same information – indeed, the same link! – when I posted it.”
I posted a link that said that in the initial post. I misread it. If you had linked and quoted it would have worked out better. You generally linked and made one comment. The crucial importance of “for evaluation” came to the fore almost a full day later. That isn’t a gender issue. Sheesh.
[algebra snipped]
“If it was measured in minutes not months I wouldn’t be as concerned.”
[Tears out hair]
“when posted by a man”
[azexxcrunuop]
I don’t know about y’all, but I think there is some surrealistic humor in the fact that Jes and Sebastian submit the same link, but neither of them realizes that the other one did. Kinda sums up the thread, imo.
Actually we didn’t have the same link, but it did have the same language.
Sebastian: I posted a link that said that in the initial post. I misread it. If you had linked and quoted it would have worked out better.
If you had read my links – rather than, evidently, just assuming that because they were links posted by me you could ignore them – you wouldn’t have spent an entire damned thread arguing against information you already had. No, I believe you that it’s not a gender issue – I shouldn’t have said that – it’s your wish to believe that what your anti-choice site told you was true, because it fitted your prejudices against pro-choice policies and public health care.
lj: I don’t know about y’all, but I think there is some surrealistic humor in the fact that Jes and Sebastian submit the same link, but neither of them realizes that the other one did. Kinda sums up the thread, imo.
It kind of sums up the thread that if Sebastian wasn’t committed to the idea that (a) government health care is bad and (b) sending hate mail to abortion providers is good, he could have acknowledged he was wrong way, way upthread.
sebastian, if you really were concerned about this guys getting good medical treatment you would realize that is exactly why the hospital that he hates is not the right place for him to recieve treatment.
The staff is doing the right thing for both the safety of their staff, as is required by policy, and for the patient who will be less hostile at a hospital he hasn’t already criminalized. The best thing would be for him to recieve treatment at a hospital that does not perform abortions. If that cannot be arranged, then at a hospital where he doesn’t have such extreme emotional animostity towards.
A less hostile patient has a better chance at a good medical outcome. Does this really have to be explained to you?
Is your conservative agenda really more important to you than the providing of good medical care?
ken: “Is your conservative agenda really more important to you than the providing of good medical care?”
Ye gods, he doesn’t agree with your premise, you reasonably can’t bash him with your concluclusion. I mean, I can argue that your comment kills cute puppy dogs – is your anti-SH agenda more important to you than cute little labs and terriers?
ken: Is your conservative agenda really more important to you than the providing of good medical care?
Er, self-evidently, yes. Sebastian opposes women receiving good medical care: he opposes poor people receiving good medical care: and he supports harassment of providers of good medical care.
Gary,
But I only speak for myself, and don’t exactly expect to be Obeyed. … Now, go ignore me like I expect.
Looks like this was the instruction that they decided to Obey.
“it’s your wish to believe that what your anti-choice site told you was true,”
The ‘anti-choice’ site said that it was for an evaluation. I didn’t notice it when I linked to it nor did even you raise the importance of “evaluation” vs. “treatment” until almost a day later. You can blame me for not noticing it immediately. You can blame yourself for not pointing it out immediately. But for heaven’s sake don’t blame the “anti-choice” site when it included the information. And don’t suggest that I dishonestly wanted to believe the “anti-choice” site’s propaganda when it said “evaluation” all along.
“Looks like this was the instruction that they decided to Obey.”
Sometimes it just takes a while to put on the brakes. The car might go off the road and off a cliff it was too abrupt a stop, you know.
Though I might have added “don’t make me come back there!”
“Sebastian opposes women receiving good medical care: he opposes poor people receiving good medical care: and he supports harassment of providers of good medical care.”
You have a wonderful translater that turns other people’s sincere opinions into a version that makes them moral scum, via your own worldview, at the expense of mere truth.
And at the expense of being able to recognize sincere differences of opinion that are different from those you restate them as.
This sort of self-righteousness does not, I suggest, make your version of the left attractive or admirable, any more than similar versions on the right work for them. Might reconsider this, just as you might have reconsidered, before having to withdraw it, accusing Sebastian of only listening to men on the basis of him not listening to you, and not getting to a broken link by Jayann.
Both you and Sebastian would be better off doing more listening to each other, but each of you at times gives the other good reason not to. This one, that I quote, is one of yours.
You make a lot of good points, at times, Jes, but a lot of other times you make it hard for people to listen to you, and it’s not all their fault that they therefore sometimes don’t. Anger doth not make one right, though I understand the mechanism, and sometimes err in that direction myself.
Not that I expect you to listen to me.
The court has determined that Atkinson was abusing the hospital’s staff.
Yes, and I’d like the court to also be the one to determine whether Atkinson’s conduct warrants denying him access to the public facility. I’m not saying the hospital acted incorrectly given the present system. I’m just saying a system where the courts made the ultimate determination would be a better system.
The next case that comes along where a hospital feels that someone has acted abusively towards its staff may not be as clear-cut as this one. That’s why we try to devise a system that will do the right thing in all situations.
Sebastian opposes women receiving good medical care: he opposes poor people receiving good medical care: and he supports harassment of providers of good medical care.
gods know it’s a rare day I defend SH, but this is going too far. SH, as best I can tell, believes that the adverse effects of the policies that you, Jes, believe would lead to women and poor getting better medical care and prevent harassment of abortion providers outweigh the merits of those policies.
ok, that wasn’t terribly clear. As best I can tell, SH believes that govt-sponsored health care / health care insurance would be ruinously expensive, detrimental to medical research, and get politicized.SH is also anti-abortion, but apparently willing to tolerate first-trimester abortions as a matter of political reality. He is also a strong defender of the First Amendment.
many of us here may disagree with the factual bases underlying his beliefs, but he is NOT in tinfoil territory.
Let’s take a really extreme example. I believe that I have the right to control access to my house, and so the laws which allow me to do so should be upheld.
Do I therefore oppose housing the homeless? No. I believe that the adverse consequences of allowing any person to sleep in any house they want outweigh the benefits that such a policy would provide to the homeless.
i read way too many blogs and blog threads. this site has continually demonstrated high standards while many others have slipped way off. Please, let’s not attribute motives to others that they do not hold.
end rant
SH is also anti-abortion, but apparently willing to tolerate first-trimester abortions as a matter of political reality.
Really? I have not gotten that impression.
Oh, mighty blog Deities, please grant us this day an open thread. Preferably one having a light, fluffy, humorous center.
“many of us here may disagree with the factual bases underlying his beliefs, but he is NOT in tinfoil territory.”
Really? What then explains his unrelenting criticism of a sound professional and medical decision?
Does anyone, besides Sabastian, believe that it is not in the best interest of all concerned for the guy to get his medical care elsewhere.
Firstly the policy guidelines of the hospital require that it provide a safe environment for both patients and staff. The guy was convicted of a criminal offense against the staff.
Secondly the guy has demonstrated that he harbors severe emotional hostility to the hosptial staff. For his own sake it is medically advisable that he get his treatement elsewhere.
This is so obvious that Sebastians refusal to see it puts him tinfoil hat territory.
Can we all please stop assuming the worst about each other, especially Sebastian, for the duration? And (as a more general request) can we also please stop automatically assuming that our side is so obviously right that anyone who disagrees with us is obviously a sub-Delta moron?
Ta much. And ditto on Slarti’s prayer for an open thread.
Anarch, are those rhetorical questions or should I give you what I think the answers are?
Slart: Don’t you have keys to the blog? I think a post consisting mostly of kitten pictures would work well around now.
I echo Anarch’s plea, and Gary’s, and for that matter all similar pleas.
I decided to paint the study sage. But I am currently in the throes of a temptation to paint the dining room a sort of apricot color. (Currently: a sort of unfortunate turquoise (3 walls) and yellow (1 wall.)
Also, there have been real advances in ducltess AC systems in the last few years, to the point that they’re often less expensive (and more efficient!) than either conventional ducted or Space-Pak systems.
Also, my boiler has asbestos. Boo hoo.
And can anyone explain to me (1) what a gas chimney is, and (2) why, if it is a chimney for gas, people can’t just vent the boiler out through it?
But I am currently in the throes of a temptation to paint the dining room a sort of apricot color.
Go for it — if it’s awful, you can always repaint.
think Jayann tried to link to this story –
Yes – thank you, Kevin. It is a disturbing story particularly given that, as I learned later, there were just 2 people on the priority transplant list (and presumably she was the only urgent non-priority one).
accusing Sebastian of only listening to men on the basis of him not listening to you, and not getting to a broken link by Jayann.
I don’t think his not getting to a broken link (my apologies) was the basis of any allegation. At the link, posted by Kevin, you’ll find a very different case of (effective) denial of treatment by the NHS, one that raises some ethical issues (IMO).
many of us here may disagree with the factual bases underlying his beliefs, but he is NOT in tinfoil territory.
That this is so is merely a sad testament to the nature of the political reality we inhabit.
Personally, I make a point of defending SH regularly. I also figured out about 24 hours ago where we disagree on this issue (the severity of abuse caused by undesired and unrelenting contact) and dropped the issue. I am rather amazed that others haven’t reached similar points of fundamental disagreement or at least novel and new disagreement. Now I just sit here giggling at how absurd most of this back and forth sounds and wondering if we all just got more summer free time or if the heat is getting to people or what. This is 3 times in the last week or so that we have had a horrendously long comment thread brimming to full with bad blood. What is the deal?
Which is a long way of saying I support GF in his long long long ago plea.
“At the link, posted by Kevin, you’ll find a very different case of (effective) denial of treatment by the NHS, one that raises some ethical issues (IMO).”
Yes, I do read links without having them repeated. I read it many hours ago.
It’s a tragic story. I’m not sure what to say beyond that, given that it’s not my country, other that it made me quite sad to read it. I’m very sorry it happened. I think it shouldn’t have happened. (I wouldn’t rely on the Torys to make it better; perhaps the Liberal Dems, or perhaps another set of Labour, but in any admin, stuff goes wrong. Meanwhile, down with the flaws of Tony, etc., but beyond that, what?)
“Which is a long way of saying I support GF in his long long long ago plea.”
Is there an office I can run for in which I’ll have your support?
Multiple blog jester? Blog chancellor?
Court fool?
I have a lot of practice at playing the fool!
Although I’ve always fancied the title of “Supreme Leader.” Has a ring, doncha think?
SH, as best I can tell, believes that the adverse effects of the policies that you, Jes, believe would lead to women and poor getting better medical care and prevent harassment of abortion providers outweigh the merits of those policies.
No: SH believes that women should not receive full medical care regardless of how many women that belief kills, and that it’s better for poor people to suffer ill-health and die. The “adverse effects” for Sebastian appear to be that the poor might stay healthy and live longer. So, yes, as ken pointed out: Sebastian’s conservative agenda is way more important to him than the providing of good medical care.
Yes, I do read links without having them repeated. I read it many hours ago.
It’s surprising, then, that you thought the link had anything to do with Jes’s suggestion that Sebastian doesn’t take heed of women’s posts.
Yes, I do read links without having them repeated. I read it many hours ago.
It’s surprising, then, that you thought the link had anything to do with Jes’s suggestion that Sebastian doesn’t take heed of women’s posts.
Listen up, this thread is done. I testify to every one that heareth the words of the prophecy of this comment: If any person shall add to these things, God shall add unto him or her the plagues written in some post you do _not_ want to read.
Amen.
Oops!
Someone really needs to come up with a Godwin-esque rule WRT abortion-related threads (even ones such as these which are only nominally related to abortion.)
Or we could just consider rilkefan’s last comment holy writ…
matt: (even ones such as these which are only nominally related to abortion.)
Very directly about abortion, especially once Sebastian posts the update admitting he was wrong to claim it was about “political healthcare rationing”.
Someone really needs to come up with a Godwin-esque rule WRT abortion-related threads
But who would come up with it? Arguments about abortion are bitter because of the feminist/misogynist split at their root, and partly because the anti-choice side inevitably brings up their poor-little-fetuses lie as a defense for forced pregnancy/forced child birth: and when Americans and non-Americans are involved, the problem arises that Americans take for granted as normal a level of hostility towards basic health care for women that is… really astonishing, to non-Americans. (I don’t just mean Sebastian’s attitude that hospital staff ought to just put up with receiving hate mail, but that clinics have got to assume they might be bombed by anti-choice terrorists.)
We could ask the kitten for a thread to post Godwin’s law proposals, no discussion permitted, secret e-mail ballot to vote for the best?
Arguments about abortion are bitter because of the feminist/misogynist split at their root…
Oh for the love of all that’s holy, Jes. That’s complete crap and, what’s worse, I’m worried that you won’t ever let yourself know it. There are certainly some misogynists who are anti-abortion — possibly many, and IMO certainly far too many wielding political power in the US — but to characterize this as the fundamental split is both stupid and stupidly bomb-throwing in a thread that doesn’t need any more abuse like this. Sheesh.
And to forestall the inevitable: yes, your next post will consist of the same bogus application of the law of the excluded middle you always employ in these discussions, “proving”, in some BS way, that your particular dichotomy is irrefutable. For the sake of comity, and everyone’s sanity, can we please just assume that that post has now been made and move on?
And I apologize to rilkefan et al for spoiling the sacred silence.
And on reflection, let me also apologize to Jes for the intemperacy of my response. [Post in haste, repent in leisure.] There should’ve been a more tactful way to express my feelings, I’m sorry.
And with that, since I’ve nothing productive to add, I’m withdrawing from this thread.
Gary,
How about “Supreme Leader of the (Court) Fools”? Has a nice ring to it.
Gary for SLCF!!! ;-}
Seriously, I am starting to feel like everyone’s peer mediator lately, as the content of far too many of my posts have been “Now can you, Sally, accept that Billy isn’t a mean jerkface just because he likes ice cream more than cake?” and “Do you, Billy, realize that Sally is right that cake isn’t poison for the soul and apologize for claiming she was on an anti-ice cream crusade?”
Anarch- It used to be the case that I would agree with you, there are principled people who have qualms about abortion that have nothing to do with hatred for women. Then people pointed out to me that the same people on the right who are against abortion are also against condoms, and other forms of birth control. They are also against vaccination vs HPV. So at least the majority of those who are against abortion are also against women having any control over their own bodies at all. And even those whose intents are pure are enabling the people who want women to be chattel.
socratic_me for OW moderator!
There’s a rather large hole in that claim that data would do a great deal to fill.
Your last statement, Frank, is entirely too closely related (logically speaking) to accusations of “objectively pro-Saddam” for comfort.
Oh dear god, no, slart.
I am a first year HS math teacher. That means I already have to wrestle freshmen all day, usually the ones who are in remedial courses. This is where I come to get away from being the adult figure in a room full of poo-flinging monkeys (which I do actually mean with much endearment. I am quite fond of my little freshmen).
Slarti- Yah, but on the other had everyone on this board could fill in a few items of information of their own.
Slarti- I thought of using that phrase myself, but I decided it wasn’t needed. 🙂
Back when I was contemplating a career change, I thought I’d teach high school calc, but then the education department at the local university thought it’d be best if I took a lot more math courses than I’d already had. Considering I was already halfway through a Master’s degree in mathematics (as opposed to math-for-educators) I thought that was a little…underkill, maybe.
Which is all a fancy way of saying that I’d planned to avoid the wrestling-with-freshmen aspect of teaching by teaching only those who were there by choice. Also, to be honest, I hadn’t ever completely talked my way into accepting the gigantic pay cut.
Compared with regular posters here who actually are mathematicians (or particle physicists), I am only an egg. Those guys know things I haven’t begun to suspect the existence of.
I actually have two degrees, one in philosophy and one in mathematics and I spent a year at UT-Austin doing graduate work in philosophy before I decided I really did want to be at a place where I could focus on my teaching and be evaluated primarily on my undergraduate philosophical instruction. As far as I could tell, and maybe hilzoy will correct me on this, there really aren’t many jobs out there for people who want to publish only sporadicaly and want to really hone in on their undergraduate courses. It just isn’t the way the field is set up.
So I decided that teaching HS would put me in a similar space if I could eventually work my way into teaching advanced students and maybe getting an intro to philosophy or intro to logic course on the map as an elective once I accumulate a bit of clout.
After a year, I can say I definitely made the right choice. I love teaching and I find ways to find kids I can really help. For instance, my big accomplishment this year was getting a Go Club up and running with a pretty strong membership. That has drawn in the type of kids that I am able to most strongly influence.
Compared with regular posters here who actually are mathematicians (or particle physicists), I am only an egg.
Not only do i agree with the sentiment, the reference warms my little heart. I have a friend doing graduate work in mathematics out at Stony Brooke and another who was at the London School of Economics doing econometrics for a while. Both of them are way way way out of my league. My focus was always on philosophy and my interest in mathematics was on its philosophical form and implications.
Yes, there is a certain amount of overlap. Particularly in symbolic logic.
Anarch: Oh for the love of all that’s holy, Jes. That’s complete crap and, what’s worse, I’m worried that you won’t ever let yourself know it. There are certainly some misogynists who are anti-abortion — possibly many, and IMO certainly far too many wielding political power in the US — but to characterize this as the fundamental split is both stupid and stupidly bomb-throwing in a thread that doesn’t need any more abuse like this. Sheesh.
I accept your apology for the intemperate nature of this response, but, yes, the root of the anti-choice/pro-choice split is misogyny/feminism.
If you are anti-choice, you don’t just believe abortion is wrong – you believe that a pregnant woman must not be allowed to make the decision to terminate her pregnancy if she thinks that’s the right thing for her to do.
That is, that the individual most intimately concerned, most affected by the decision, best-informed of the circumstances of the pregnancy and the state of health of the mother – and therefore both best able and best qualified to make the decision whether to terminate or continue – is the one person that anti-choice zealots argue should be at risk of prison, death, or sterility if she does make that decision.
(In general, these anti-choice zealots also believe that sex education is bad and that access to contraception is bad – especially access to the pill – and that it’s only right for the US to refuse to fund health care providers around the world unless those health care providers agree to deny women full access to health care.)
So, yeah, Anarch: anti-choicers may want to believe they’re concerned for the cute lil fetuses, but the root of the issue for them is their misogynistic belief that women can’t be trusted with the right to make important decisions about our own lives and our own bodies.
I accept your apology for the intemperate nature of this response, but, yes, the root of the anti-choice/pro-choice split is misogyny/feminism.
Jes, there are plenty of places on the internet where you can post this crap and get cheered for it. Why do you insist on crapping all over this site?
kenB: Jes, there are plenty of places on the internet where you can post this crap and get cheered for it. Why do you insist on crapping all over this site?
Just as Sebastian posts his ideas about abortion here, even though he isn’t going to get cheered for it, and Charles Bird posts his thoughts about the current situation in Iraq here even though he isn’t going to get cheered for it, you mean? Who knows? Why do people keep posting and commenting here even when they know they’re going to say things no one else on Obsidian WIngs will agree with?
Shorter KenB: Jesurgislac sucks and is ruining the site. 🙂
“Not only do i agree with the sentiment, the reference warms my little heart.”
Better than the implications of “thou art god,” or far worse, “her nipples went spung!”
Me, I know nozzink! Nozzink!
“I accept your apology for the intemperate nature of this response, but, yes, the root of the anti-choice/pro-choice split is misogyny/feminism.”
“I accept your apology for the intemperate nature of this response, but, yes, the root of the anti-choice/pro-choice split is that anyone who views things at all differently from me is a completely evil maniac, and I will continue to stack my rhetoric to disallow any possibility of civil disagreement and legitimate differences of opinion. I shall continue to distort the words of those I disagree with to make it appear as if there’s no room for different perspectives, because I am entirely right and they are entirely wrong, but they are fanatics. Thus, all shall eventually respect me and agree with me, if I just continue to do this, and I shall win, and justice and truth shall triumph via reframing and dishonesty.”
Shorter KenB: Jesurgislac sucks and is ruining the site.
What’s ruining this site is the lack of a clear statement of purpose, IMO, but that’s a topic for HoCB. I just don’t understand why this site interests you when you don’t seem to have any desire for real discussion.
At least it’s all in a good cause.
I thought the purpose was pretty clearly to promote and develop civil debate between those with conservative, liberal and any other type of leaning.
As an amusing sidebar, I blame W for “ruining” this site. The conservative voices here have started sounding like the liberal ones in many ways because he is just so bad in so many different ways.
Better than the implications of “thou art god,” or far worse, “her nipples went spung!”
“Thou art God” has been a quote that is close to the heart as well. Then again, when I start talking God, I tend to come at it from a very “we are the children of God and ought to accept our divinty and, thus, our moral responsibilities and stop being weenies that hide behind original sin.”
And while I don’t recall the source for the nipples quote, I have to say I quite enjoy the implications ;-}
“What’s ruining this site is the lack of a clear statement of purpose, IMO, but that’s a topic for HoCB.”
Speaking strictly as my own idiosyncratic version of a lefty-liberal, the purpose is clear: a site for fair and faintly respectful dialogue between left and right.
It’s failing, as I’ve been saying since about January, due to the lack of recruiting of new conservative/rightist/libertarian contributors who will post at least a couple of times a week, if not slightly more, so as to balance out the beloved and adored and wonderful Hilzoy (not that more posts from Katherine would be anything other than solicited, and, hey, if Edward doesn’t start posting again, why not take him off the list, since he seems to have lost all interest in contributing?; much though I’d prefer he started posting again.)
There should be a 50/50 balance in posts, and perhaps in comments, not that there should be some sort of mandate or enforcement of the latter.
But absent a balance in posts, the site dies.
As I’ve been pointing out since January, and making practical suggests regarding, but I guess the blogowners have other priorities than fixing this.
“And while I don’t recall the source for the nipples quote”
Bad Heinlein.
“As I’ve been pointing out since January, and making practical suggests regarding, but I guess the blogowners have other priorities than fixing this.”
If you have specific suggestions for people you think might be good, please email us.
It was a couple of weeks ago that I actually thought to myself, for the very first time, “Man, I sure do love hilzoy’s posts, but I wish there were more balance here.” It was creepy. Very very creepy.
Quoth Sebastian: Is being denied medical care considered a legitimate punishment for criminals in the UK? I suspect not.
And if he were being denied the right to get treatment from all UK hospitals, you would have a very good point. Unfortunately for your argument, that is not the case. “Delay” <> “Deny”, and since the delay in question is at least partially due to his having spent a month in jail for harassing the staff of the hospital in question, my capacity for sympathy is steeply reduced. Forgive me for using the school analogy, but what’s happened here is not someone being expelled from school – rather, that person has been told that they have to attend class in a different room.
Neither does your attmept to equate this with the cases of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for RU-486, because in none of those cases were the women conducting a harassment campaign against the pharmacist at any time, much less prior to when they tried to get their prescriptions filled.
The continual harping on how Atkinson was wronged by facing the consequences of his own actions rings hollow. That’s the same kind of “logic” that leads to abusers asking the question “Baby, why you gotta make me hurt you like that?”
From Niels: Why am I not surprised that the pro-abortion zealots on this thread refuse to see either 1) the free speech issues here, or 2) the wrongfulness of denying medical care?
Perhaps because you’re so biased against their views that you are unable to see that neither of the two things you claim them to be blind to is the case here?
Freedom of speech is not the only thing protected by the First Amendment here in the US – aside from religion, there’s also freedom of association. The hospital staff elected to exercise their freedom of association by not associating with Atkinson in any circumstances other than life-threatening health problems on his part.
And since there are numerous other hospitals near the one which denied Atkinson service, he is in no way being denied care. He is still completely free to obtain all forms of care from all hospitals whose staffs he did not harass.
Well, it probably achieves “faintly respectful” most of the time, but it’s certainly not a hospitable community for conservatives, and I suspect that simply offering more conservative posts won’t change that. If all we want is “faintly respectful” but with more conservative voices, why don’t we all just go over to tacitus.org? Personally, I want something more than “faintly respectful”; but I dare say that some other people who comment here semi-regularly probably want less.
I guess the question that I think needs to be answered is, why does this community want more conservatives? Is it just to have more sparring partners? To lure in more people to proselytize, or to blame for re-electing Bush? Or to genuinely be open-minded to arguments from the right and try to reach a rapprochement? Or do we really only want certain types of conservative voices, ones that don’t challenge our assumptions too too much (i.e. is a dislike for Bush a pre-requisite)? I don’t think the community is of one mind on this.
kenB: I just don’t understand why this site interests you when you don’t seem to have any desire for real discussion.
I just don’t understand how you can read this thread and think that I’m not interested in real discussion. Unless, from your point of view, “real discussion” excludes feminism by default?
“I guess the question that I think needs to be answered is, why does this community want more conservatives?”
I can only speak for myself, but I’d like more dialogue here, and in our country, which we all love.
If you think you’re up to posting well enough, I’d suggest that the blog owners give you a tryout.
I value debate, not chorus, myself. I want a competition of ideas, not a pile-on.
I want dialect to produce truth, not boring beat-downs.
“Unless, from your point of view, “real discussion” excludes feminism by default?”
See, characterizing differing points of view this way suggests a lack of interest in debate, or at least a blindness to it.
It discards a differing point of view via your reframing of the different point of view in a blind or dishonest way.
Try to see that.
There are a lot of legitimate views about what feminism might call for. Some might even disagree with your point of view. And, yet, they might even still be feminist.
But if you pretend I’m not talking to you, you can’t honestly respond. But, sure, enjoy that POV, if you prefer.
Jes, Gary’s pretty much speaking for me, but since you addressed me, I’ll just say briefly that to me, “real discussion” involves active listening as well as speaking.
Gary, I too value debate, not chorus. My point is that I don’t think this opinion is necessarily shared by everyone who participates here, or at least not to the same degree, and there’s no explicit official statement of that goal (nor consistent moderation to that end).
But that’s too much meta-discussion for this, so I’ll keep the rest of my responses confined to HoCB.
“But absent a balance in posts, the site dies.”
Man, I don’t get this. Any other site would be delighted to have hilzoy posting at it. Any other site that pretty much sucked would suddenly become essential reading if hilzoy started posting at it. If a site were just completely empty and hilzoy started up a solo blog, that would immediately be one of the ten best sites on the web.
But somehow if she becomes the last poster standing here by attrition, the site dies?
Sure, ObWi may no longer achieve some vision of left-right debate. But that vision was mostly an artefact of left-wing do-gooderism anyhow. If you want to know how the right reaches out to enage with the left, read Jeff Goldstein or Tacitus or Ann Coulter. It’s baseball bats and foul-mouthed rants about traitors. (Pretty much as at the national level, it is only a few misty-eyed Democrats who have any remaining interest in “bi-partisanship”. The Republican leadership has made its attitude towards bipartisanship amply clear over the last five years.)
The reason that a site with even and balanced participation from both sides is not currently a practical ideal is because the right is currently in a tail-spin. They sold out their ideals to follow a gang of crooks. Many of their ideas were bad to begin with. The level of honesty in debate on the right kept dropping and dropping until–well, I guess there’s still Hugh Hewitt and Powerline, so we don’t know how far it can drop.
Let’s face it: there is not going to be a “responsible, honest conservative” element in this country to debate with until they perform a complete purge of the Bushes, Cheneys, Roves, and so on. Too many of them put their party above the country, and they haven’t gotten out of that mind-set yet.
Meanwhile, you can have a site with occasional dishonest anti-abortion tantrums plus hilzoy, or you can have a site with just hilzoy. I prefer the second, but given hilzoy’s presence I can’t see why either of them would look like a dead site to anyone.
I think von should post more. He’s a good egg.
Forgive me for using the school analogy, but what’s happened here is not someone being expelled from school – rather, that person has been told that they have to attend class in a different room.
Actually, I disagree. It is exactly like being expelled from school (in a place like London). I have no doubt the students have multiple schools in a fairly small area where they could attend. One has the right to deny a student service based on criminal behavior against its staff. Merely moving the man to another classroom would be the equivalent of treating him anyway but assigning another secretary to open his mail.
“I guess the question that I think needs to be answered is, why does this community want more conservatives?”
My short answer is “what Gary said”.
My long answer is that I have voted Libertarian and Democrat in the two elections I was old enough to vote in. I am considered liberal for OK, but generally think of myself as a moderate conservative (though, to be fair, I define that in a Burkeian sense which generally reads “have a healthy respect for institutions and don’t change them if they aren’t broke). I really don’t think that we are at a loss for moderate to conservative voices in the comments section, though we do still have more liberal voices and certainly louder ones. However, I think that pro-Bush voices tend to feel isolated here, as they must be starting to feel isolated everywhere if the polls are any clue. This, I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing.
What is the bad thing is the lack of a consistent positive effort by a more conservative voice to bring new stories and ideas to light in the form of posts. Comments are, by their very nature, reactionary. Even if we had a steady conservative voice in every string of comments, the fact that it is an article that caught hilzoy’s more liberal eye and then is presented in her more liberal framework means that the conversation is already unbalanced. This is not necessarily a bad thing for any given post, but as a trend of all posts, it means I don’t feel nearly as expanded by new ideas as I once did.
“But that vision was mostly an artefact of left-wing do-gooderism anyhow. If you want to know how the right reaches out to enage with the left, read Jeff Goldstein or Tacitus or Ann Coulter.”
Actually it was an artifact of Moe Lane’s vision at the time. And that he isn’t left-wing by any stretch of the imagination I can come to.
noThat,
I think you are conflating “right/conservative” with “Republican”. This is, in my view, a grave error. Pretty much every conservative I know left the Republican party in the last 5 years or so for exactly the reasons you list. If they commented here, they would still be a nice strong conservative voice.
Socratic saith: Actually, I disagree. It is exactly like being expelled from school (in a place like London).
Given the multitude of NHS hospitals within a convenient distance of Mr. Atkinson, I must continue to disagree.
I think you are conflating “right/conservative” with “Republican”.
I can’t think of any well-known conservatives who have a public forum that aren’t doing the same thing. If the terminology being used is incorrect, then I have to argue that it’s those working the hardest to propagate it who are to blame.
“I just don’t understand how you can read this thread and think that I’m not interested in real discussion. Unless, from your point of view, “real discussion” excludes feminism by default?”
Second sentence answers the first.
In other words, someone interested in “real discussion” doesn’t redefine their interlocuter as moral scum. As you do, Jes, constantly, by your retranslations of what they say.
It really isn’t like being expelled from school. That means losing friends (perhaps; certainly not being able to see them so easily), leaving a known milieu, starting over.. . This man’s being switched from one evaluation wait list to another. That happened to me (because the second hospital could see me faster); it simply involved a journey in a different direction. No loss of former daily contacts or known daily haunts or whatever… no switch from a medical team I knew, to strangers.. no loss of fellow patients… just a different journey to the appointment.
(And if the journey presents problems for Atkinson then the NHS may well have to arrange transport; not because of his circumstances but because it’s part of the deal.)
Given the multitude of NHS hospitals within a convenient distance of Mr. Atkinson, I must continue to disagree.
Actually, this was rather my point. From what I recall, the UK education system, like the American education system, tends to place schools as closely as it places hospitals, if not more closely. However, jayann raises interesting social issues I hadn’t considered. I was thinking only of the inconvenience of travelling and of the hassle of transferring from one to the other.
As for the conflating of words, I tend to hold very strongly to the maxim that one should read another’s words in the most reasonable/benevolent way possible. Thus, when Gary or I bemoan the loss of conservatives, while also bemoaning the state of discourse on several of the threads lately, you can combine those to gather we mean something different from what those who have currently appropriated the term mean. Moreover, given that I have already defined conservatism (as I used it) to some extent already, it should be fairly easy to follow what I mean.
However, if you wish to establish that those currently in power are horribly misusing the word and intentionally using it to cover their incredibly non-conservative actions, far be it from me to disagree with you. They are bad men. Bad bad bad bad bad. With that established, I will go back to maintaining that what our political culture needs is more debate across divides and less association of party affiliation to conservatism/liberalism. This site attempts to accomplish that and, at its best, succeeds marvelously. At its worst, it gives threads like the one that started this.
NOTE: I find this complete threadjacking kind of fun. Maybe I should do it more often. This thread needed to be jacked.
Gary, I must take issue with your implication that thinking someone was “excluding feminism by default” would be equivalent to thinking they’re “moral scum”. I might say this (as stated) excludes the middle more than Jes’ comments. Does Jes think people who exclude feminism by default are “moral scum”? It’s possible, though I’ve never seen her state that explicitly. I don’t think it’s necessary to mindread this either, as I can think of other reasons to draw a line in the sand at that particular point in a debate.
To me, the concept of responsible citizenship in a polity (whatever size we’re discussing) involves asking what I/we would/should personally be willing to sacrifice in order to form a more perfect union with out fellow citizens. As opposed to what I/we are willing to have other people sacrifice for my benefit. Pointing out, particularly in discussing abortion, that less-affected members of that polity should consider this strikes me as, if not always called for, certainly not unreasonable. Pointed questions as to whether one’s debate opponent made the first effort to consider the position of the people their policy suggestion affects can be rude (and certainly can be interpreted that way). However, if nothing I’m saying about a particular issue would lead even a generous person to conclude that I’ve definitely considered the position of the people who will be most affected by my policy proposal, questioning me is in order. Those questions could take the form of ad hominem attacks, but I don’t think they have to. When they don’t, I don’t see a real problem.
Jes can be strident. Is that productive for her cause? Opinions probably vary. But as long as it is an ideological position being argued, and not the launching of ad hominem attacks, it is just vigorous debate. If neither side is persuasive to fence-sitters, well, effectiveness is a separate issue. I’d also like to note here that a discussion which is nonproductive between two people can still be informative for other readers. Dishonest argumentation (no examples, just a note that archives help limit this, for regulars) is a larger problem. But that’s where we as readers have to contribute by pointing it out (accurately).
On preview: I started by responding to Gary, then wandered afield. I in no way intend the closing to remotely imply that I find Gary intellectually dishonest, in fact just the opposite. I don’t see a quick and easy rewrite so I’m merely heading off possible misinterpretations here.
Why post this at all? First, socratic_me is right that the thread needs jacking at this point. Second, I read similar stridency from Jes on a different blog/thread and found it somewhat useful – because it does tie in to the citizenship belief I noted earlier. There are a lot of ways to address the people who will be most affected by policies you promote. You do have to address them, though, if you want to make an argument that’ll be even slightly compelling to them.
Additionally, I’m more likely to respond when I disagree with Gary or Hilzoy because saying, “exactly!” all the time would be boring.
CMatt should comment more.
It seems to me that conservative discourse has a problem right now that liberal discourse didn’t in the mid to late ’90s. Clinton was never of the liberals the way Bush was/is of the conservatives – he was avowedly not tied to that particular branch of the party, so there were separate threads of argument about “is this good/bad” and “is this liberal/not”. Bush and his crew tied themselves much more intimately to conservativism as an idea, or a set of semi-related ideas. So his problems in the realms of morality and competence are tangled up a lot more with those ideas – in particular, “how can someone talk such an acclaimed conservative line and apparently hoodwink basically everybody in the cause, then turn out to be such a disaster?” in a way that Clinton didn’t for iberalism.
As an outsider to this, I know that it’s ahrd to resist scoring points, and I know too I’m not alone in that. I realize that this doesn’t make life easier for honest conservatives interested in figuring out what to do next when faced with the basically complete collapse of an administration that was supposed tob e the triumph of their cause. It’s messy, ugly, and hard. It’s quite possibly something best done mostly away from the rest of us – get an internal stability and then take it to the world, because neither astute informed sort of critique such as fine folks here would of course provide (right? right) nor the howler monkeys much help.
The right’s increasing tendency to define “conservatism” as “agrees with the president” is a big problem in discussions of conservatism. When even John Sununu gets labeled a “liberal” because he’s fallen on teh wrong end of the ideological divide from the Bush administration, it’s hard to believe that the word “conservative” really means anything anymore.
But that’s what the people who are being called conservatives (by themselves and others) are doing these days, so those who want to argue the case that conservatism is not automatically the same as being a Republican have their work cut out for them.
“The right’s increasing tendency to define ‘conservatism’ as ‘agrees with the president’ is a big problem in discussions of conservatism.”
I think that’s “decreasing tendency,” given the recent tendency to redefine him as a “liberal” (!!!) as they rush away from him in droves.
The Right’s attempts to redefine Bush as a “liberal” are hilarious – esp. as they’re trying to pull that retcon only as Bush’s flock of chickens comes home to roost and his poll numbers plummet.
I don’t think the idea is getting any traction outside of the wingnut blogs, though I could be wrong since I’ve never listened to RW talkradio and don’t watch TV news anymore. If the non-blog opinion leaders (Fox, Limbaugh et al.) try the scam, and make it stick, that would be an awe-inspiring triumph of newspeak.
CMatt: Does Jes think people who exclude feminism by default are “moral scum”? It’s possible, though I’ve never seen her state that explicitly.
I really, really try very hard not to define anyone as moral scum. I may think what they believe is morally scummy, or that they have let themselves avoid the but entirely direct, obvious, and indeed already occurring lethal consequences of putting those beliefs into action, but – and this may answer kenB’s intemperately posed question from yesterday – I try not to throw around words like “moral scum”. (And, indeed, a quick check discovers that I have not called anyone moral scum on this thread or on any other.)
Jes, you’re right, my first question was indeed intemperate. I see now that I’m expecting more of you than you’re able to give — I’ll stop trying to change you from now on.
kenB: I see now that I’m expecting more of you than you’re able to give — I’ll stop trying to change you from now on.
Thanks, Ken. I’d rather you didn’t try to change me, and I’m certainly not capable of giving you what you want from me. I’ll continue to expect more of you, even if you feel you’re not able to give it – I prefer to assume people are capable of rising, rather than think they have to fall.
So you’ll think people are moral scum, but just try not to call them that to their faces?
Because that’s the impression the quote above gives, especially with how you stress how you try not to use the words. You’ve said nothing about not making moral judgments (and the part about people letting themseleves ignore the consequences of their ideas indicates that you are, indeed, making them), just that you try not to use a loaded term to describe the people you’re judging.