Irreparable harm appears to lie in wait for us if the Republican shenanigans take hold in our country.  The situation gets wilder and wilder with the passage of time and the approach of elections.  I speak of what is being done to the ragtag of our public schools and the profession of medicine.  I don’t refer to the Mir-a-lego combustion.  Hopefully that is being attended to elsewhere.

My first concern is the eradication of sex education in the public schools.  Why did we ever begin sex education?  All those issues will become caustic again.  What is this?  Along with forbidden abortions  we’re not going to warn children?  How dark! Not only did unwanted pregnancies cry out for sex education, but also vulnerability to child sexual abuse.  “A third of sexually abused children are abused before the age of nine.” (Finkelhor, 1986, p 229).  “Stranger danger” wasn’t a joke.

Equally as nervy and destructive is attacking the physician’s time-worn oath to “do no harm.”  If recently passed state prohibitions prevail,  some states will find themselves with a crippling doctor shortage. (I’m trying not to say, “and it serves them right.”)  “If you see a fleeing of providers from states that have severely restricted their ability to practice in line with their moral compass and medical ethics, it will be a huge loss to public and community health,” said Jamila Perritt, an abortion provider in Washington, D.C., and the president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. “We don’t have to guess what’s going to happen. We already see the high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity in places like Louisiana and Mississippi. But we’ll see much more of that as these bans continue to sweep the country.”