April 15, 2013 - Friday I talked about the dangers unnecessary regulations can impose upon the accessability and availability of medical services from a patient's perspective, but I didn't say much from the perspective of medical providers. The goal of medical providers is to offer care when approached by a patient in terms of performing requested or necessary procedures and to have an ability to assess problems and have knowledge to provide options for various medical problems. This includes care for both mental and physical ailments as well as situations that may affect both forms of ailment simultaneously.
Mary's role evaluating Nina's mental health has already been completed. And I should clarify that her comment about a less than ten year age difference is to conform to regulatory standards dictating a sexual relationship between a minor and someone ten years senior to him or her automatically constitutes abuse and therefore must be reported. It doesn't mean that a relationship between a 14-year-old and a 23-year-old is legal (in fact I'm pretty sure in all states it isn't), just that she doesn't have to report it, and out of respect for her patient's privacy she would prefer not to report such an incident. In general statutory rape is a crime only when the guardians of the usually younger party wish to pursue prosecution, with punishment inconsistently meted out based on how angry the people pressing charges are over the situation. But some of the ways to combat this, such as strengthening access to sexual education or parental monitoring I already kinda touched on Friday. The point isn't the legality of what happened in the past but the obligations of the people that now become involved in the present.
I'm fairly confident that Mary acted within her legal boundaries with her care. Unfortunately I couldn't find much information regarding Dr. Gregory's slightly different involvement. I've definitely heard stories of young women paying for abortions with their parent's medical insurance which then revealed their actions to their parents, and I'm not sure what obligations Dr. Gregory has in terms of obtaining Nina's medical records which also could indirectly lead to Nina's parents becoming notified.
But to conpensate for all this I very specifically chose Dr. Gregory as Nina's caregiver because of his wife's background of performing illegal abortions in Latin America and his own questionable policies regarding medical billing. Ultimately Dr. Gregory doesn't quite follow some of the ethical rules he's supposed to, and though this could get both himself and the clinic in trouble, it allows me to fudge the specifics of some of the problems presented by Nina's situation as well as potentially set up storylines down the line looking specifically at these ethical dilemmas. But for the moment I don't actually have anything planned, so I can't even give spoilers if I wanted to. Just laying seeds for a future storyline if I can figure one out (because honestly if I do anything with this, which I do kinda want to, it'd probably be pretty extremely involved and span several months or longer).
-D
Mary's role evaluating Nina's mental health has already been completed. And I should clarify that her comment about a less than ten year age difference is to conform to regulatory standards dictating a sexual relationship between a minor and someone ten years senior to him or her automatically constitutes abuse and therefore must be reported. It doesn't mean that a relationship between a 14-year-old and a 23-year-old is legal (in fact I'm pretty sure in all states it isn't), just that she doesn't have to report it, and out of respect for her patient's privacy she would prefer not to report such an incident. In general statutory rape is a crime only when the guardians of the usually younger party wish to pursue prosecution, with punishment inconsistently meted out based on how angry the people pressing charges are over the situation. But some of the ways to combat this, such as strengthening access to sexual education or parental monitoring I already kinda touched on Friday. The point isn't the legality of what happened in the past but the obligations of the people that now become involved in the present.
I'm fairly confident that Mary acted within her legal boundaries with her care. Unfortunately I couldn't find much information regarding Dr. Gregory's slightly different involvement. I've definitely heard stories of young women paying for abortions with their parent's medical insurance which then revealed their actions to their parents, and I'm not sure what obligations Dr. Gregory has in terms of obtaining Nina's medical records which also could indirectly lead to Nina's parents becoming notified.
But to conpensate for all this I very specifically chose Dr. Gregory as Nina's caregiver because of his wife's background of performing illegal abortions in Latin America and his own questionable policies regarding medical billing. Ultimately Dr. Gregory doesn't quite follow some of the ethical rules he's supposed to, and though this could get both himself and the clinic in trouble, it allows me to fudge the specifics of some of the problems presented by Nina's situation as well as potentially set up storylines down the line looking specifically at these ethical dilemmas. But for the moment I don't actually have anything planned, so I can't even give spoilers if I wanted to. Just laying seeds for a future storyline if I can figure one out (because honestly if I do anything with this, which I do kinda want to, it'd probably be pretty extremely involved and span several months or longer).
-D
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