Kavanaugh Thinks It's OK to Perform Elective Surgery on People Without Consent [View all]

[turbinetree]

BY
Hannah LeibsonRebecca Cokley TalkPoverty.org
PUBLISHED
August 13, 2018

This article was published by TalkPoverty.org.

Right now, Congress is in a deadlock over Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Senators are reviewing more than 1 million pages of his legal writing — which have laid out his stance on women’s reproductive rights (opposed), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (opposed), and the Affordable Care Act (opposed) — and members are battling over access to additional documentation that could reveal past experience with torture and wiretapping. While many of Kavanaugh’s opinions have been controversial — in particular his dissent from a decision that allowed an immigrant woman to have an abortion — one of his most problematic rulings has gone unreported. As a Judge in DC Circuit Court, Kavanaugh argued that people with disabilities could be forced to undergo elective surgeries, including abortion, without their consent.

In 2001, three intellectually disabled DC residents brought suit against the city in Doe ex rel. Tarlow v. D.C, after they were subjected to at least three involuntary procedures: two abortions and one elective eye surgery. Ultimately, the district court agreed that these women’s due process rights had been violated and that “constitutionally adequate procedures” had not been followed. The District Court ruled for the plaintiffs and held that DC must make “documented reasonable efforts to communicate” with patients and if unsuccessful, the government had to take into account the “totality of circumstances” before proceeding to ensure any decision is in the best interest of the patient. This decision codified patients’ right to self-determination, and struck down the practice of elective
surgeries without consent from the patients at stake.

On appeal, Judge Kavanaugh vacated the District Court’s injunction, arguing that “accepting the wishes of patients who lack, and have always lacked the mental capacity to make medical decisions does not make logical sense.” That stands in contrast to even the most conservative interpretations of the laws that existed at the time, which required two separate health professionals to determine whether a patient had the capacity to make medical decisions before every procedure. The lifetime pass Kavanaugh seems to be arguing for, which would allow doctors to perform any procedures they wanted on a person who was once ruled unfit, does not exist.

One hundred years ago, Kavanaugh’s ruling would have been at home on the Supreme Court. In the 1920’s, in the famous 8-1 ruling of Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court found a Virginia statute that allowed for the sexual sterilization of a third generation, “feebleminded” women was constitutional because “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

https://truthout.org/articles/kavanaugh-thinks-its-ok-to-perform-elective-surgery-on-people-without-consent/


So this Federalists Society asshole basically believes in eugenics.....................and the list of his bull shit keeps getting longer and longer, now what is Grassley and the fucking turtle going to do..................are they for eugenics.................


November 2018 cannot get here fast enough..........................vote