Public health vs personal healthcare decisions
To the editor:
I would like to respond to a letter written by Arthur Amidano of Cape Coral.
There is a lack of understanding about the difference between public health and safety and a personal healthcare decision that only affects one person.
Vaccinations protect society in addition to the individual the same as laws against drunk driving killing people on the road.
Protecting the single life of a woman is a health care decision.
A woman in Ireland was forced to keep a fetus that was miscarrying and she died of septic shock as a result. A simple D & C would have spared her life. That changed the law in Ireland which is predominantly Catholic.
Another woman there had to travel to England when an Ultrasound revealed that the skull of the fetus had not formed and the brain was outside the skull. The fetus could never have survived and she could have died too. These are individual health care decisions that should only be made when a fetus is severely developmentally disabled.
I saw rooms full of these people who could not take care of themselves in any way nor could their family but they could feel pain. Now they are in group homes with less supervision after Gulf Coast Center closed.
Some workers are very caring but for some it is a low-wage perfunctory position. Sometimes they don’t even talk to them. You would talk to a dog.
The letter also contains name calling. Not everyone is liberal. I’m an Independent Moderate and a retired Registered Nurse. These issues are difficult and complex but when I was young, we could not wait to get the oral polio vaccine. I personally have a high school classmate who walks with crutches and braces to this day from polio when she was 4 years old.
Alice Mack,
RN, retired,
Fort Myers