I'm not certain about other states' practices, but usually the "registered agent" for a business is the person authorized to accept service of lawsuits, not the person running the business. It's usually an attorney, or a person on the company's board --- it's the go to person who needs to be listed with the SoS or Department of Corporations, whatever --- so it's conceivable the same person could be the registered agent for tens of businesses.

Florida has gone crazy in its health care. I believe the doctor that operated on my sister killed her. I believe he didn't sew her intestines back together after they repaired a incarcerated hernia. Nothing we can do about it because she had no kids, was never married and was over the age of 25. So if its coming out of Florida sadly it's probably true. See what happens when you make it impossible to sue doctors. They become careless.

Great! Bradblog really ought to get out front running the FAKE rightwing news.

Dead babies turning up by the 10,000s in Iraq --- but that's no problem.

What we NEED is a dead baby in an abortion clinic.

Let's use Brad's blog to run the story while he's on vacation.

Is it me? Or is this just a TAD incongruous on the Bradblog???
Are we doing a remake of King of Hearts here or what??

Paul, where in that story, other than it dealing with the oh-so-touchy subject of abortion, do you see a bias in favor of the right?

I wrote the story full well knowing that right-wing blogs may take it and run like crazy with it, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it.

You know, when I first found Brad's blog, I pegged him with the "L" word, and he took issue with that --- that Brad is blogging from a purely liberal point-of-view here. Apparently you seem to have made the same assumption I did.

My understanding is that Brad Friedman just wants to cut through the crap, and get the truth out, and a lot of the crap in politics today comes from the right.

This story has to mention abortion, the procedure is inextricably a part of it, but it is more about the REPUBLICAN-RUN state of FLORIDA (GOVERNOR JEB BUSH, REMEMBER?) screwing up its oversight of privately-owned clinics like this.

Of course, I know I'm talking to a solid brick wall here, as so many people today apparently have forgotten long ago that there is such a thing as "the center."

For the record, "Paul," I'm pro-choice, an independent with some conservative leanings and some liberal views. After I researched the ownership of this clinic and discovered one clinic owned by the same people had been closed a year ago, I realized it was as much a crime story as anything, and a story about the failure of one state's government to take the issue of the health of poor or indigent women seriously.

Comments like yours, Paul, underline the reason the politically-charged blogosphere is sometimes such an irritating place to "be."

I'm going back to blogging about pure crime for a bit where I deal with less-annoying comments, like death threats from meth-head teens from MySpace who got mad when I blogged about their buddies murdering old people for drug money.

(But don't get all giddy, Paulster --- "a bit" just means a day or two. I'll be back, and you still won't be able to peg me. Maturity is the acceptance of ambiguity, man. I embrace my ambiguity, but you keep on putting me in whatever little box makes you comfortable, whatever you can accept.)

Incidentally, in my own blog I titled this "The one wherein I make no one happy."

For you all who seem to marvel at what you are assuming is an anti-abortion entry on the Brad Blog, I must point out that you seem to not really be all that familiar with past guest-bloggers here.

Daniel Borchers, anyone? Daniel is much, much further to the right than I am, and he's guest-blogged on this site more than once. Learn the blog --- and this should go for any blog where you're going to leave a comment --- before you start making assumptions about the blogger or his/her guest bloggers.

Steve, I agree your post is about a possible crime, and highlights the need for more careful oversight and administration of health care in Florida, but your choice to go with such an "oh-so-touchy" subject here may seem highly suspicious to some of the regular readers. It will tend to be less offensive to anti-abortion readers, which may even encourage them to pay attention to the election fraud issues, take them seriously, but you had to expect to catch flak for this post.

Daniel Borchers enjoys the immunity of wishing to silence Ann Coulter, which is a view strongly endorsed by most of the people who read this blog. So there is a distinction there.

Personally, I am very happy to engage in finding common ground with people of differing political views because everyone in America needs badly to unite against the war-mongering fascist criminals who have usurped the administration, and effectively the entire government. I just think the choices for subjects should be aimed more at bringing about unity, than inflaming those who are touchy about certain subjects.

For instance, your first post, was on a subject almost everyone can agree upon, left, right and center. Even though I think that subject is probably amply covered in the MSM, it doesn't threaten to touch off flame wars, might actually get people agreeing on something. I'm pretty sure we'll all agree this thing looks pretty fishy, but Paul did have a point about the relative importance of it to what is taking place in the Middle East, what we are perpetrating there, and tempers are agonizingly short lately. So. There you have my two cents.

While this is not the usual fare on BradBlog, I didn't really take it as an anti-abortion article. It made me think how successful the Christian Right-dominated Republican Party has already been in dismantling legitimate abortion and family planning clinics in large parts of the country, especially in the Bible Belt, with the predictable result that less regulated and less legitimate operations will inevitably take their place. This administration is infamous for dismantling well-regulated and useful operations and programs and blaming the victims when dysfunctional or even illegitimate replacements move in to fill the void. Witness FEMA, the EPA and the FCC, to name just a few. States like Florida, that are already Banana Republics, will usually be the first to show the results of the demise of functional, government funded operations.

To Paul, from #3:

I could relate to everything you said except for when you said it was fake news. It's not fake news. You can follow the link to the MSM CBS affiliate story. Unless what you meant by "fake" was that you don't see how it is anything but local news. But that's not what you said.

And I think we have to cut Steve some slack on this, because Brad did grant him guest-blogger status, and I think it still is "Bradsblog"?

And we like Court-TV where Steve also works, doing investigative work, because Court-TV has been one of the few places that has given Brad, and the voting fraud issue any air-time.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3116
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3099

To Steve,

It seems to me you are coming off as maybe just a little bit overly defensive here, making 3 comments in a row here, after being provoked by Paul's one short comment? I don't know why you didn't just point out to him that you had dug around a bit, came up with some unknown facts about the people who run the clinic, and you wanted to get those out there quickly, and this is a very fine venue you have access too, so why not? The fact that that info didn't get into the CBS story just shows how the blogosphere is often, and here yet again, more on top of things.

;-) And of course, when the MSM learns of the info you have uncovered, they will of course jump on it and credit you and reference your excellent posting here at BradBlog. They always do that. That's why bradblog is so widely known. NOT!!!

(We're just all a little envious here of all the coverage that stories like this already get, and stories about kiddie porn too. We're touchy on that, that's all)

So I say, welcome, and keep on blogging. But like, are there not some angles on election-related crime that you could post here next time? Like what's happening on the Alaska Dems lawsuit thing? There are sure some crimes there.

Steve #9

Excellent point!

Agent99, thank you. I didn't mean to be defensive, but my hackles are always raised when people try to put me in a box. A conservative trying to do the same thing at my own blog because I support gay marriage would prompt the same reaction. The blogosphere is no neater in nature than the rest of human expression, but people sure try to make it that way, and I suppose I always fight that --- hence the "ambiguity" line.

Truth is, lately most of the stories I've written anywhere that were politically charged were dealing with some Republican who finally revealed his/her true self and by doing laid bare the disease of hypocrisy that afflicts many on the right. I knew that, but regular Brad Blog readers wouldn't.

I would actually welcome some tips on similar stories to the ones you mentioned, as well as those stories, because one of my talents is finding information on freely-available databases no one knew was even there --- an example might be that I once discovered that the SSN of a man who was just convicted of being a child molester but at one time was a self-appointed far-right flack in a database where a tax lien was filed on him in the '80s. Even though the guy was now a convicted molester, I still notified the state that ran the database because NO ONE wants their SSN so easily available in a public database.

I also appreciate the comments from people in the last couple of hours who obviously understand where I was coming from.

And yes, please like Court TV. Catherine Crier has had me on about big crime stories on several occasions, and she's my favorite person there to talk with, in fact. Naturally I was tickled for Brad when he began to make appearances there. Crier is serious, sober, asks brilliant questions and is just a really good example of something lacking in too much news lately --- integrity. Her stamp of approval on Brad's work re: Busby/Bilbray in particular was high praise, in my eyes.

If you (anyone) have a tip for me about anything I've blogged here, about any of the stories Brad and other guest-bloggers here have been dogging, let me know via a comment and I will get back with you via e-mail.

Last comment from me for now: Steve in #9, thanks. You got it.

"Pro-choice" doesn't mean "Pro-abortion", it means "keep government out of our private lives". In a perfect world, the government's idiotic hands would not be in citizen's personal lives, and everyone would "choose" NOT to have an abortion.

The flipside of it, that no one EVER points out, is that if we give our government the power to make abortion illegal, they can turn around (with the SAME power we've given them) and FORCE people to have abortions, limit kids like in China. It's the SAME POWER!!! And don't think they wouldn't do it some day.

Right now, "pro-choice" means the government has NO POWER to tell a citizen whether they CAN OR CANNOT have an abortion. It means the government is out of the picture, where they should be.

Same thing with Terri Shiavo. Give them the power to STOP families personal choice of pulling the plug on a vegetable??? Then they ALSO HAVE THE POWER to turn around and FORCE pulling the plug.

They should not have that power, ON EITHER SIDE OF THE COIN!!! Government should keep out of citizen's personal lives.

They can tell the sheeple, "trust us, we'd never force people to have abortions...we'd never force you to pull the plug"...

GUESS WHAT? I DON'T TRUST THEM!!!!! You make a law, and you never know down the road who will next lie or cheat their way into power (see Bush)... The safest thing is to keep government OUT OF PEOPLE'S PERSONAL LIVES!!!!!!!

And by the way? Keeping government out of peoples' personal lives is a CONSERVATIVE SENTIMENT. These people who are for abortion laws are wolves in sheeps' clothing. But I'm sure a lot of them are just plain stupid.

Dr. Dolittle #2

This JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) article shows that hundreds of thousands of Americans die unnecessarily each year, and millions are injured in some way (link here).

My two cents:
Yes, it is Brad's blog, & lately he's chosen to focus primarily on electoral fraud because it's so pervasive & important & so destructive of democracy. It's a crucial issue that has been ignored--or worse, derided as fantasy--by most of the mainstream media.

In addition to that issue, he's put his attention in the past on various stories of corruption in high places, stories that have also been largely ignored or twisted by the media.

THAT is why Steve's choice of material here strikes me as odd. NOT because it seems anti-choice; I don't think it does. It just, to my mind, smacks of sensationalism & is of a kind that--as Agent99 says in comment #8-- is amply covered by the msm.

Brad's appearance on Catherine Crier's show is a case in point: his segment was preceded by several segments devoted to the story of the woman who drowned her children. Stories like that abound in the mainstream. Brad's appearance was a few moments of vitally important truth in a sea of sensationalism.

I don't know you, Steve, & I mean no offense to you. I am THRILLED Brad was on & I'm grateful to Ms. Crier for having him. I emailed my thanks to her & I hope she continues to have him on. But I don't think the Bradblog is the right forum for stories such as this--however tragic--that get plenty of airtime & are not as momentous a threat to the nation as rampant election fraud & the disease of corruption in Washington.

Obviously, it's Brad's call. As I say...just my two cents.

"I could relate to everything you said except for when you said it was fake news. It's not fake news."

Of course it is.

You seem to be ignorant of the MOUNTAIN of fake news we wade through these days.

How did that fetus get there, how did the reporters get there, how did the whole event get there, and what a MARVELOUS coincidence that the rightwing anti-abortion forces have a new FAKE story to spread around, with your help.

Did you know that nine kids from UCLA (or six or 666) voted in nine different precincts in Los Angeles during the last primary? Sure did. It's voter fraud, like we've all been telling you. Forget Diebold --- anyone can vote multiple times in any election, so fraud by Diebold, no problem.

It's easy to create fake news. All you need is a fetus, or some college republicans. The fetus can't get a check from Murdoch, but YOU CAN.

If I want to read rightwing propaganda, I'll check in at Pravda, I mean FOX. I don't want to read fake news on a liberal blog, Steve.

Since that story has not been through the wash of additional investigations, it is just a myth in search of credibility. No thanks to you for putting Brad's imprimatur on such an obvious fake story.

Paul, pretend just for a second, that this story is about...appendectomies instead of the other A word. Now, imagine learning that a large number of appendectomy clinics were owned and operated by the same two people. Next we find that one of those clinics was shut down because a former McDonald's deep fry operator with no schooling, medical license, or actual medical training was the doctor in charge of most of the operations at that appendectomy clinic and his fraud cased a few people their lives. That one clinic is shut down. A few years later, someone reports that a patient at another appendectomy clinic run by the same company is shooting blood out of their eyes during a routine appendectomy. The police come, no bleeding patient is found. The next day, the person shows up at the clinic again covered in blood. The clinic is promptly shut down. Another investigation ensues.

Does that make it less "fake" and "right winged" to you? Read the CONTEXT. Don't get to the word abortion and assume it is pro-life scare tactics and propaganda. It's not.

Agent99, now I can see that you understand why I reacted to Paul as I did. Also, in the headers of his message, not visible on this page, he is signing himself as "Paul," but he is otherwise anonymous, except for his IP address, which is sometimes meaningless.

I react, based on my experience as a crimeblogger, very badly to anonymous comments that are particularly argumentative. When an accused killer free on bond wearing an ankle bracelet easily removed with an exacto knife is likely sitting at home reading your blogging about him or her, you learn another level of wariness about comments and e-mails that bloggers who mainly stick to other issues may not always have.

Even your screen name, Agent99, is something identifiable, potentially searchable, and the kind of thing someone might choose with care to represent themselves online --- "Paul" could be anyone. I also realized immediately that the guy was missing the point and reading only what he wanted (or didn't want) to read.

I appreciate the clarity of your response, and its level tone, something I'm not good at maintaining, myself

Melissa said : "Paul, pretend just for a second,"

• That this event didn't take place in Florida.

• That this event had nothing to do with an active program of attacks on legal rights in the United States.

• That this event had been investigated by impartial reporters and found to be accurate.

• That this event had not been published in the RIGHTWING (Chicago Tribune-owned) Sun-Sentinel.

• That this event is not the fodder on every rightwing blog and media outlet in the country, for the next X number of years.

That's a lot of pretending I'll be doing, just for you hypothetical.

"Does that make it less "fake" and "right winged" to you? Read the CONTEXT. Don't get to the word abortion and assume it is pro-life scare tactics and propaganda. It's not."

Read the CONTEXT? Those points above ARE the context.

Manufactured propaganda is BIG BUSINESS in Florida among the rightwing. In Los Angeles, we lost our newspaper to the Tribune Company, which proceeded to fire the liberal staff, publish outright rightwing lies on the front page, give the opinion pages over to rightwing, racist political cartoons, and refuse to cover any of our antiwar/antiBush street protests. Indeed, we got a leaked email from the CEO that stated, outright, that the liberal views of Angelinos will not be found in the paper, and that the paper existed to foist Tribune Company lies.

That S. Florida RAG can burn to the ground for all I care. If you don't know you are fighting a rightwing coup, then you are just TSFW.

Beyond that, so what, one more piece of rightwing agitprop. Boring, if not for the BLOOD.

Hey, thanks, Steve.

I've got my neutral hat on in this thread. I know it's getting scarier by the day to be the kind of person who tries to get to the truth, especially when it's controversial stuff, because there ARE a LOT of authoritarian personalities out there who will become violent when their sensibilities have been offended, or at least make it their mission to drive you crazy with their disapproval. But I don't think you need to worry about this Paul. While he may be disrespecting your work here more vehemently than is seemly, he has a point, and you have a point.

While it is a definite possibility that you have put your finger directly upon a real problem (yet another) brought about by our new form of studied-incompetence (government), there does not seem to be any real basis to believe a crime was committed, here, other than that the police were called, and they eventually found something that looked a little bit more like it might have been murder than merely finding an embryonic cluster of cells in the guilty hands of a stem cell researcher.

A woman goes and gets an abortion, comes back next day in pain, then allegedly gives birth again, and it is anonymously reported to the police by someone we have been given absolutely no reason to believe worked at the clinic. Maybe someone got an abortion, but the procedure missed a twin, but since there were no doctors at the clinic when the woman allegedly came back there, rather than going to an ER, it can't be more than wild speculation that anything diabolical or criminally negligent took place. So. Paul's point has merit, and so does yours. The deal is that he can't be sure there is anything but sensationalism behind posting this piece, and you can't be sure the owners/operators of the clinic acted improperly or were in any way unfit for it. You might be right that it is the same people owning that clinic as a number of completely un-health-care-related businesses, but it really could be that perfectly reputable abortion clinics are being picked on by fanatics... sued by an angry parent, or husband, or guilty patient, for assault (the abortion). We could speculate for hours.

Given the real press of vastly under-reported crimes with apocalyptic implications, and how upset many of the readers of this blog are about it, this subject, even with the good point you are trying to make with it, probably is going to go over like a lead balloon. As I mentioned earlier, though, it might make certain conservatives who want to find out about the election issues feel more comfortable here. Apparently, this subject matter is apocalyptic to them.

Though, truly, while we are out torturing people and raping them and blowing them to bits on such a scale in the world, our domestic health care issues are going to strike quite a few as, for the moment, trivial. I have to think Brad would have warned you about the hornet nest into which you would be flying. Try not to take it personally. There are a bunch of really wonderful people who are regulars on this blog. The vitriol does with some regularity start to take wing, but people are not in the best of moods lately. That's the downside of exposing oneself to something more like the truth, but the upside far outweighs it. Wait and see. You'll be glad you stuck it out.

Agent 99, this news report has all the earmarks of BS. It is carried by a BS newspaper, and we are hearing of 'police' in South Florida as if there is no history of this kind of LYING in recent history, coming right out of there.

The proper protocol? Skip posting the redhot propaganda in small papers, and let the data get WASHED a few times in the lye of actual, impartially derived FACT.

It would not be hard to obtain a fetus or stillborn, and concoct this idiotic story. Since the rightwing will now hang this story around the necks of innocent women, and use it in their mission to call down VIOLENCE on those women and those clinics, the vituperance of my reply has a context which you only partly acknowledge.

We do NOT need to further rightwing agitprop in order to make 'conservatives' who might come here feel better.

Anyhow, that's my last comment on the issue, unless someone addresses me or my comments further.

Yes, Paul, I can identify with your feelings, and I take your points. I guess I have made SUCH an effort not to go postal about most of the issues that truly get me at least as angry as they do you, that I seem to minimize the merit of many of the really hot issues of our day. I've been begging people to try to look beyond their hot-button issues whilst we all focus on election integrity and stopping the carnage in the Middle East for so long that my good faith attempts at neutrality might seem pretty unfeeling. One of my dearest friends in the world killed herself because, before abortions were legal, her husband made her choose between having the kid and him. She chose him. He gave her an abortion with a coat hanger, a classic desperate botch, thought he'd killed her, left her for dead, and then left her for a younger woman. She couldn't get over it. So. Really, no need to respond, but it is not a lack of feeling that bids me try to stay neutral here.

I don't know that an attempt to "further right wing agitprop" is what was the intent here, and I'm certain that isn't the intent of The Brad Blog, but I also know that Brad attempts to make common ground with as many conservatives as he can, and there is a good basis for making that attempt. We're all in this together, even if we want to tear each other's hair out. If Steve was fooling himself about posting this piece, I betcha he's very clear on it now.

I gravitate towards the stories that cover the "big picture" of attacks on our civil liberties and freedom by powerful officials.

Everybody hates to see anything bad happen to a child, but we have to be careful. There is definitely a push to intrude on the American people by this administration, using helpless children as the reason. Handicapped people were the reason we had to give up our rights to have paper ballots.

Does anybody know how many liberties we lost the other day when Bush signed that child predator bill?

Everybody is aware of the "Dateline" program that seems to be everywhere lately featuring something everybody loves to watch or read about. People who are bigger losers and have a much worse life situation then themselves. Ann Landers made a living out of it for years and it's been popular ever since.

Here is a great article which thankfully demolishes the basic premise of the show and contains this paragraph:

"Dateline, like the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, like other news reports citing the same myth, are relying on a study by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice that found that 19 percent of Internet users age 10-17 "received an unwanted sexual solicitation in the past year," but three-quarters of those were from fellow-children or juveniles. Just 3 percent of youth Internet users "received an aggressive solicitation involving offline contact," and "none of the solicitations led to an actual sexual contact or sexual assault." An "epidemic" of predators? Hardly. Twenty percent of children online "approached by a sexual predator"? Ridiculous. There's no question that Internet predators are a reality, and that children and parents need to be aware of the right precautions."

Pretty scant evidence being used to scare the life out of Americas children. Read the whole article! Albert Gonzales used figures gleened from Dateline in a press conference about the issue. One of Datelines very first shows involved igniting a cars gas tank with an explosive device because they couldn't get it to ignite in a crash.

NBC has been covering up evidence about 9-11 for 5 years. Who's to say these predators aren't getting make-up from the same guy who made that guy at the Colbert roast look exactly like Bush. He didn't look anything like Bush in reality!

Just another conspiracy theory?

Murder is everywhere in American life.

We could have predicted the current wave of murder in some American cities.

The military is making heros out of homicidal psychos by lowering its standards to keep up with dropping recruitment.

The psychos they train come back:

"I came over here because I wanted to kill people," he quoted Green as saying. "The truth is, it wasn't all I thought it was cracked up to be.

"I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience," Green was quoted as saying. "And then I did it, and I was like, 'All right, whatever.'

"I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was like nothing," Green was quoted as saying. "Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant.

"I mean, you kill somebody and it's like, 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'"

(link here, bold added). Imagine what these types do later after being called heros when they get back ... no matter what type of work or profession they become involved with ... they will kill again.

Dr. Dolittle #2

This JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) article shows that hundreds of thousands of Americans die unnecessarily by clinics and by doctors each year, and millions are injured in the same way (link here, PDF).

They give the phenomena the name "iatrogenic causes", which is another way of saying, you can't get us for this in court.

So in this case, murder may not be the issue, it could be "iatrogenic causes".

Even the police use psycho doctors to do some of their work:

A doctor who oversaw dozens of Missouri executions until his questionable practices led a judge to suspend executions in the state, has been sued for malpractice more than 20 times and has a history of making medical mistakes, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on Sunday.

Alan R. Doerhoff, 62, also has been banned from at least two Missouri hospitals and was publicly reprimanded by the state's Board of Healing Arts in 2003 because Doerhoff was trying to conceal malpractice claims from hospitals where he was working, the newspaper reported.

The state Attorney General's Office was aware of the reprimand, but the state Department of Corrections continued to employ Doerhoff to handle lethal injections, the Post-Dispatch reported

(link here, bold added).

I have been past this story for day's now feeling a little shocked to see something like this here. The anti-abortionists are well known for gross distortions e.g showing films of late term abortions and letting them appear to be first term abortions. They also falsely lead many to believe late term abortions were preformed on healthy fetuses. The situation now is that women whos lives might be in danger from non viable (e.g no brain etc) late term fetuses cannot get abortions and are forced to leave the country in order to save their own lives. When they return they cannot speak of their experiences for fear of prosecution. The extreme right are known for disinformation. The anti-abortionists have used disinformation against women for decades. Be suspicious of stories such as this.

It's refreshing to introduce a new subject, & there's nothing wrong with this one.

Whether or not the story is true is debatable, according to some. I don't know.
What I do know is that misconduct by officials in any business, including this one, is not a stretch for the imagination, & especially not for Bradblog readers.

I'm against abortion myself.
This episode is just an example of the Pandora's box we opened when we made aborting your own child legal:
it's ok to kill him/her if they're still in, but not if they're already out.
Abortion is a grotesquely absurd, repulsive, sick & disgusting practice.

Hey, here's a thought--
How about we use birth control seriously & accept responsibility for the outcome of what we know going in, our actions might bring?
Let's hear it for responsibility!
Encouraging responsiblity helps society function & prevents chaos.
Encouraging mothers to off their own if they want to doesn't.
It's a demeaning message we've been sending our children for at least 2 generations now, that was never sent to us when we grew up.
If you wonder why young people aren't outraged over the mass corruption in government & the killing of innocents in Iraq, Lebanon, & elsewhere for no reason at all but that we want to & can---it seems growing up in a culture that has disappointed them, is admittedly rotten, & has made killing innocents legal---has had it's effect.
How can you muster outrage when your own life experience has been that things were never right anyway, & killing innocents is an accepted practice?
I grew up knowing sex was basically a serious thing, that was not to be engaged in lightly because there were life-long consequences & that babies were a blessing & a gift from God to be thankful for.
Now, the message has changed: Sex is about a fun time with anyone that looks good, so get in there & get you some--you can always off the unwanted result.
Except for disease, of course.

Irresponsible sex, sold to us as our "right" or our "choice", is a spin-job that brings society down & makes it more crude & thoughtless, not more enlightened.
Your "choice" was made when you "chose" to have sex while not using 2 different methods of birth control & when you "chose" to have sex with a person you refuse to accept responsibility with for what might result fom your actions.
Abortion "rights" are just a rationalization for being irresponsible.

Dr. Doolittle,

Do you mean you can't sue doctors in Florida?

Dredd,

THat was a good link you gave.
I'm going to use the information to answer my doctor the next time he asks me why I won't go in for an expensive optical screening procedure under anesthesia that is newly recommended all over the country thanks to Katie Couric's husband dying from cancer of the colon..
"Because there are 225,000 deaths every year from iatrogenic causes in hospitals, doctor. If I don't have to go, I opt not to go.
12,000 deaths per year from unnecessary surgery (they don't list the deaths from the 'necessary' surgeries--those darn surgeons love to cut--it's what they DO!), 7,000 from medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 'other' errors in hospitals (?!),
80,000 nosocomial (means gotten while in the hospital) infections in hospitals,
& 106,000 deaths from nonerror, adverse effects of medications."
These numbers do not include injuries, just deaths, mind you.

You can sue for an "iatrogenic" death or injury. That word just refers to an event that occurred directly from medical care.
The thing is--everyone makes mistakes on the job. Think of your job & of the mistakes you've made over the years.
Well, doctors & nurses make mistakes too, but their mistakes affect people's lives--most of the time no harm is done & it's corrected, but sometimes some amount of harm is done.
Eventually no one's perfect, no matter how hard they may try to be, & they make a mistake.
Anyone who says they don't is lying or they're just too careless to even realize what they've done.
It doesn't help that there's a nurse shortage & nurse's are expected to work huge amounts of overtime while short-staffed--especially in specialty areas, like ICU & the ED. If you don't either sign up for OT on your own to fill in the times they have no nurse scheduled to come in ( which means working all different shifts mixed together), or if you don't come in when they call you on your days off--which is frequently--they say you're not a team player, & they can't give you your vacation when you requested it. It's coercion.
Even though you seriously need your days off to have a life & refresh yourself.
And God forbid, if you call in sick. They expect you to drag yourself in & take it personally unless you're admitted to a hospital yourself.
Plus, thanks to "cutbacks" at large hospitals, say in St. Louis for instance, nurses are expected to take over several other people's jobs besides their own.
For instance, doing the secretary's work on nights & weekends: answering phone calls re 26 patients in a busy ICU is a full time job in itself that takes you away from patient care, especially when a new patient arrives. Plus taking off your own orders, which can be many pages long in ICU, without a secretary to do them for you, cuts way into patient care.
Then they tell you to draw your own blood--they're cutting the lab out, & to take your own blood down to the lab because the system is down. (You have to get someone else to watch your patients first, so it holds everyone up)
Then, they cut the night aides. Now you have to find another nurse to help you turn, bathe, or pull your patients up in bed & he or she's taken away from his/her own patients to help you. Usually, you have 2 patients, which doesn't sound like that much to an outsider, but it is because of their changing acuity. It frequently takes 4 or more nurses to care for one patient depending on what's happening.
Finally, they cut the night cleaning people out. Now, when someone is bumped out because they need the bed, or when someone dies, you have to go in their & scrub the entire room, bed, floor, everything (if you have the strength left)& you have to hurry up because the ED doc is gettin ancy to send his current problem up into your hands.
Do you know any other job that expects you to take over the jobs that four other people had, when you barely have time to complete your own in the first place, & then has the nerve to tell you at your evaluation that you're doing a great job, however due to budget cuts, they can't give you the full increase you deserve? But here's an atta-girl instead.

That's why there's a nursing shortage.