NY outlaws midwives

[operator kos]

I would change the headline, but the site will no longer let me. My window of time to make edits has expired I think.

Since you insist on pushing the matter, no NY did not outlaw midwives. Nonetheless, it is now effectively impossible to obtain the legal services of a midwife in your home. Whether or not the legislature takes steps to change this will show if this happenstance is in fact something the PTB do desire. I have my suspicions, since legislators will often create a tangled web to derail something they don't like when they don't have the nerve to actually come out and ban it.

I don't mean to derail this conversation, but there is an example from another thread which I think is relevant. Is it actually illegal to carry a concealed weapon in Oakland? Not if you go through the proper channels. The process of obtaining a CC permit, however, is effectively impossible, and includes getting permission specifically from the head of the Alameda County sheriff's department, who has unlimited authority to decide who gets one on a case-by-case basis. Of the millions of people living in Alameda county, only a handful have been graciously granted permission to keep and bear arms. Furthermore, a judge in New England recently set a case precedent that police can point a shotgun in your face and seize both your gun and your permit for literally no reason. See here if you think that's an exaggeration.

So what's my point? If I were to say that Oakland has outlawed carrying guns, I would be pretty much right. Even if it isn't literally true, it is still the effectively true for all intents and purposes.

Now, there is a difference here which I'm sure you'll point out. In the Oakland/CC case, the legislature proactively passed measures which would make it illegal to carry. In the NY/midwife case, there was an apparent oversight which allowed a situation to evolve in which midwives can no longer legally practice. As I said, the subsequent actions of the NY legislature will show if this was actually an oversight, or if it was their premeditated intent.

[JackRiddler]

dupity boo

[JackRiddler]

So what's my point? If I were to say that Oakland has outlawed carrying guns, I would be pretty much right. Even if it isn't literally true, it is still the effectively true for all intents and purposes.

The difference I was going to point out may seem like a trivial grammatical one, but it should signify a world of difference.

What most outraged me in your post was the "outlaws," present tense, which didn't come from the source material. It's your phrasing, and it's what turns the statement into a lie. No move was made (since the licensing provision of 1992) to do anything of the sort.

If as in your Oakland example you'd used past perfect, perhaps with the modifier "effectively," as in "New York has effectively outlawed," it might have been a true description of what happened through a chain of events since 1992. Debatably, but I would have never felt as though someone was actively deceiving me, and I wouldn't have posted repeatedly to call you out on it.

Why do you do that? My impression is you do that to lend additional urgency, to hector us into seeing and feeling and agreeing with you that the event is another planned part of an unfolding narrative orchestrated by one great "PTB" that's coming to take away all of our rights.

It's a style.

Now this is a remarkably illogical sentence:

Whether or not the legislature takes steps to change this will show if this happenstance is in fact something the PTB do desire.

Who are the PTB?! The New York legislature? The doctors lobbying to let the current situation stand as it is? Or what?

Other hospitals so far refuse to license midwives, either out of their commitment to forcing hospital births for all, or because they fear the potential for malpractice suits. A hospital may yet step up and do the right thing to relicense the midwives.

The legislature will or won't correct the licensing provision. (Given how Albany works, that will depend entirely on Sheldon Silver and Malcolm Smith, and who among their clients and constituents they feel like serving. All Albany bills get to a floor vote entirely at the will of the chamber presidents. It's a very fucked up system.) The only "PTB" involved other than Silver and Smith is the hospital doctors' lobby.

Being denied a home birth is a violation of a basic rights, but in this case not due to a larger "PTB" that is systematically taking away human rights. If the law is not changed, it will have nothing to do with a "PTB" beyond Silver, Smith, and the New York obstetricians. (Also, the patriarchal tradition that's had midwifery under attack for centuries. But that's an institution, not a PTB.)