FSTDT Forums
Community => Politics and Government => Topic started by: DiscoBerry on July 09, 2012, 12:30:55 am
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US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals says its ok to lie to women in Pregnancy Crisis Centers...And can impersonate doctors. I don't see how that works some care to explain?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NiU0in7mZk
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Cause the 4th Circuit is....stupid?
Ironbite-wait...what?
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???
The fuck? This is seriously one of those times where you almost wonder what the judges were smoking when they made that decision.
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Oh and they're located in Virginia....oh...oh god.
Ironbite-I might need to sit down for a few.
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The bits about lying to women are bad enough as it is, but I'm particularly floored by the decision to allow these people to impersonate doctors.
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does this mean if i work at a crisis center i can abuse my client by telling them to do something stupid cause I'm a "doctor"
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Does that mean I can lie about being a church and not pay taxes? Cuz that seems fair.
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Can we get an article source on this please? I checked on Jurist and found nothing.
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Can we get an article source on this please? I checked on Jurist and found nothing.
Here's the court's decision. (http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/111111.P.pdf) Hope this is along the lines of what you wanted.
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I'm almost scared to see this go to SCOTUS. If they uphold it, then wouldn't it be officially legal for anyone to pretend to be a doctor, fuck up, and kill their "patients"? But I guess that's ok to pro-life people because "PLZ THINK OF THE UNBORNED BAYBEEZ" or something? Why is everything these "pro-life" people do so patently anti-life?
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Can we get an article source on this please? I checked on Jurist and found nothing.
Here's the court's decision. (http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/111111.P.pdf) Hope this is along the lines of what you wanted.
Thanks. (+1)
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So a priest pushed for this law and it passed?
But Obamacare is unconstitutional?
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HOW? WHY? AAAGH!
So a priest pushed for this law and it passed?
But Obamacare is unconstitutional?
That too. One step forward, two steps back. Way to go USA.
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1) I did not read the whole ruling, but it says not one damned word about these places being allowed to lie to women. Here's what the law stated:
Under the ordinance,
"[a] limited-service pregnancy center must provide its clients
and potential clients with a disclaimer substantially to the
effect that the center does not provide or make referral for
abortion or birth-control services." Id. § 3-502(a). This disclaimer
must be made through one or more "easily readable"
signs that are "conspicuously posted in the center’s waiting
room" and written in English and Spanish. Id. § 3-502(b). The
failure to comply with the terms of the ordinance is punishable
by a citation carrying a maximum civil penalty of $150.
2) The Pregnancy Center, one such establishment, argued that this ordinance unfairly infringed upon their right to the freedom of speech by requiring them to tacitly support abortion as a moral choice. The city did not argue that they weren't compelling them to "speak" against their principles, but instead argued that they had the right to regulate it as commercial speech, the same legal theory that lets us regulate advertising claims and the like. However:
The Supreme Court has defined commercial speech as "expression
related solely to the economic interests of the
speaker and its audience." Cent. Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp.
v. Pub. Serv. Comm’n of N.Y., 447 U.S. 557, 561 (1980).
Stated in another way, the hallmark of commercial speech is
that it "does no more than propose a commercial transaction."
As such, the city's reasoning is kinda bullshit because:
there is no indication that
the Pregnancy Center is motivated by any economic interest
or that it is proposing any commercial transaction. The Pregnancy
Center seeks to provide free information about pregnancy,
abortion, and birth control as informed by a religious
and political belief. This kind of ideologically driven speech
has routinely been afforded the highest levels of First Amendment
protection, even when accompanied by offers of commercially
valuable services.
Likewise, the city's other argument, that it was like the disclosure laws for abortion clinics, was similarly shaky:
The differing contexts of the speech restrictions in those
cases, however, render the cases inapplicable to the compelled
speech before us. In Casey, the mandatory disclosures focused
on the speech of licensed medical professionals, and the regulations
were upheld because, even though they implicated a
physician’s right not to speak, they did so "only as part of the
practice of medicine, subject to reasonable licensing and regulation
by the State." Casey, 505 U.S. at 884. More particularly,
the regulations there were permissible because they
facilitated the process of obtaining a patient’s informed consent
prior to performing a medical procedure. Thus the regulation
of such professional speech was imposed incidental to the
broader governmental regulation of a profession and was justified
by this larger context. In contrast, the pregnancy centers
that are subject to Ordinance 09-252 do not practice medicine,
are not staffed by licensed professionals, and need not satisfy
the informed consent requirement.3
As to the city's compelling interest, they simply could not prove it:
Here, the record establishes, at most, only isolated
instances of misconduct by pregnancy centers generally, and,
as the City concedes, none by the Pregnancy Center itself.
Indeed, the record contains no evidence that any woman has
been misled into believing that any pregnancy center subject
to Ordinance 09-252 was a medical clinic or that a woman in
Baltimore delayed seeking medical services because of such
a misconception. The City instead cites allegations of deceptive
practices occurring in other locations or second-hand
reports of "stories about harassment." The City’s failure to
provide more than speculative evidence of problems at Baltimore’s
pregnancy centers strongly suggests that the need for
regulation of those centers is not as pressing as the City
asserts.
While I certainly agree with the intentions of the law, the city didn't put together a good law. Had they sought to specifically prohibit the explicit or implicit misleading of patients or had the requirement been that establishments that dispense medical advice without a doctor present put up signs to the effect of "The staff of this clinic does not include licensed physicians and patients are advised to consult with a licensed physician before beginning suggested treatments" (such a law would apply to crisis pregnancy center, homeopathy clinics, "cleansing" services, even certain branches of planned parenthood), the outcome might have been different. But they did not. They made a law that blatantly sought to restrict the speech of one particular group, under the shoddy legal theory that any "commercially valuable" services were automatically commercial speech and without any hard evidence to back up their claims of compelling interest. Unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise, I'm forced to side with the court here.
3) That Young Turks report is on par with Right Wingers who blather that the ACLU argued NAMBLA could legally molest children or that the Supreme Court just legalized death panels. If it's not OK when the other guys do it, it is not OK when we do it.
Question: Would we prefer the appeals court rule that the city doesn't have to present hard evidence when banning or restricting certain forms of speech? Or that narrowly tailored precedent can be reinterpreted and expanded by anyone less than the nine supremes?
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I hope everyone at one of these CPCs gets charged with practicing medicine without a license.
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I hope everyone at one of these CPCs gets charged with practicing medicine without a license.
They can be. Easily. It just has to be proven in a court of law that a specific person or organization has so misrepresented themselves as prohibited by the relevant laws. In this case, the city couldn't provide conclusive evidence of any such incidents in Baltimore.
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I understand what Kit Walker is saying, so I guess I have to agree that the ruling was correct.
I was planning on asking how putting up signs that inform customers of what services are not rendered was violation of the first amendment, but realized that if signs like that were allowed, it would in theory have to be applied to all businesses and absolutely everything not provided. Hence it would be unenforceable and impractical. That said though, despite the impracticalities of the original law, I still fail to see how this actually violates their freedom of speech. The clinics are still allowed to say whatever they want, it is just that the state is also saying a little something on the side as well.
That said to my understanding they cant be held accountable for peddling medical lies because they are not medical professionals and are thus not held to the same standard. This becomes a really tricky scenario when you take into account that freedom of expression allows you to dress up like a doctor and say whatever the hell you want. To my understanding none of these clinics claim to be medical professionals, and as such are free to give out (incorrect) medical advice. Furthermore it seems that unless they actually do a physical examination of the visitor, or cause harm they are not guilty of anything either. It is apparently legal to impersonate a medical doctor (this was news to me).
As such, there does not seem to be anything actually illegal in what they are doing. We can all agree that it is reprehensible and unethical, but it's not illegal. Honestly, in light of that, I cannot think of any kind of measure that would actually be able to work against this kind of behavior. I doubt even the alternative law that Kit Walker mentioned would stick. If anything the best I can come up with is a law that makes providing someone with factually incorrect medical advice would be committing a crime, but that is a serious stretch at best.
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So according to these judges...
(http://myzerowaste.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/butcher.jpg)
...this man is qualified to give medical advice!
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So according to these judges...
(http://myzerowaste.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/butcher.jpg)
...this man is qualified to give medical advice!
No, he is allowed to say whatever he wants to, medical or otherwise, because of the freedom of speech laws. Also because he is unqualified he cannot be punished for giving incorrect medical advice as he is not held to the standard of the medical profession. Further provided he does not actually claim to be a doctor he wont even be held liable for any harm that comes from someone following his advice.
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Sylvana and Tolpuddle Martyr, you've got it incorrect. The ruling states that since the city can not force a non-profit (and therefore non-commercial) entity to speak against its principles, particularly when the city can not prevent hard evidence of a problem that needs correcting. Additionally, they ruled that institutions that provide medical advice but not services are not held to the same standard as those that perform actual medical procedures. That. Is. It.
The law being examined said nothing about crisis pregnancy centers lying to women, in any way. It forced them to put up a sign that specifically mentioned abortion. Under the terms of this ruling, requiring sign to the effect of "This establishment offers medical advice but is not staffed by licensed medical doctors. The City of Baltimore recommends that you consult a physician before beginning any course of treatment advised by this establishment." in all establishments it would apply to (health clubs, supplement stores, homeopathic clinics, crisis pregnancy centers, some Planned Parenthood locations, etc) would be fine. It might be unconstitutional for different reasons, but it would be fairly easy to prove a compelling interest and it would be hard to argue that anyone was forced to speak against their principles in a non-commercial context.
It helps to imagine the dark mirror image in cases like this, where if the ruling went the other way it could be used for ill. So let's get hypothetical:
A city decides to pass an ordinance requiring any sort of gay outreach group within it's city limits post a sign that says it does not provide information on or referrals to Homosexual Reparative Therapy services. Naturally, this gets challenged. The city argues that gay outreach centers offer "commercially valuable" services that render this regulation of commercial speech, that the people they help deserve full disclosure, and provide shaky evidence (albeit shaky evidence) that ex-gay therapies work alongside evidence of gay suicide rates and HIV infection rates (thus providing the basis for a compelling state interest). If the Baltimore law was held up as constitutional, there's a better chance that this law could be too. Would we want that?
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I understand the ruling. When I looked into it, I realized just how catastrophically bad that law was.
The problem is that regardless of this Baltimore law, which was pretty poorly conceived to begin with, Crisis pregnancy centers are allowed to give factually incorrect medical advice without any repercussions. Further because they are not medical doctors they are even more free to do so because medical doctors have to answer to the medical council if they give factually incorrect medical advice.
In short these centers cannot be touched at all (for a number of different reasons not just the Baltimore law.) despite giving out potentially dangerous medical advice.