This blog is not the normal place for comments on
the “right to life” debate as it is usually conducted, but I wanted to note the
closing of the NOVA Women’s Healthcare clinic in Fairfax City, VA. The history of the clinic includes a lawsuit
against it by its own landlord, Eaton Place (Virginia, not in Toronto!), in part
because it attracted daily protesters whom the landlord says bothered other
tenants in the building. The Washington
Post staff had written a detailed report on July 14, 2013 here and has an editorial sympathetic to the
clinic in the paper today (Friday August 30, 2013).
Ken Shepherd has a “News Buster” account of the
matter, including stories of vomiting patients, here. A major point of controversy was that both
local regulations and state law imposed regulations on the facility appropriate
for full surgical facilities, but not enforced against private clinics that
offer less “controversial” (read, “morally objectionable”) services. I
might have run into “regulations” with my own recent dental implant surgery,
but fortunately the monitoring during my sedation was simple and not intrusive.
It’s very disturbing that someone could be liable
for the traffic he or she (or “it”) attracts.
Imagine suing a gay tenant in an apartment because a past visitor
returned illegally and damaged the premises or robbed. (We used to think about this possibility back
in the 1970s in NYC. On at least two
occasions previous “tricks” returned and rerang the intercom, partly because of
economic need. One person stole cash
from a wallet but did not harm anything.)
The idea also applies to the Internet,
potentially. A particular client in a
shared hosting environment could, because of public controversy, attract
hackers or denial of service attacks, and other clients on that server might
want the controversial website owner held responsible, or at least shut down as a "nuisance". This is a dangerous variation of the theme of
downstream liability. In any case, state
laws could vary a lot on this matter. But
apparently such liability is possible in Virginia.
As for the debate on abortion, I’ve always felt that
it is a psychological surrogate for something deeper, the idea of giving every “living
soul” (as my father called it) a chance.
Some people confuse the issue with contraception, imagining that the
latter practice denies a pre-established “soul”
a chance to lie. (Physics doesn’t
support that idea. In fact, it takes
some time after conception, even after birth, for a “soul” capable of “free
will” to develop; see Books blog, June 1, “I Am a Strange Loop” by
Douglas Hofstadter). Some bring into the
debate the matter of euthanasia, and make pious claims about serving the needs
of the severely disabled (as in the Terri Schiavo case in Florida, where the
family was eager to personally care for her but feared that many other families
would not have been).
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