After the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade, I heard many women talking about “my body, my choice,” and the fact that the reversal of this decision had taken away a fundamental right for a woman to determine how she would live her life.
“My body, my choice” makes sense to me now, and it would have made vital sense to me during my child-bearing years.
Those years and those choices are in the past for me nowadays. What looms in the future for me and my aging friends are choices around hip and knee replacement surgery, access to diagnostic testing and a depressingly long list of assorted medical procedures.
The federal and provincial governments that have spoken out so vociferously to assure Canadians that abortion access in our country will remain open to all those who seek it, are just as vociferously denying me the option to pay for having a hip replacement in my own country.
What happened to “my body, my choice”? It only applies to my uterus?
Should my hip be offended and seek to create a special interest group? Perhaps the prime minister could apologize.
For much too long, the myth that universal health care defines the Canadian character has been propped up by every politician who fears to mention that the emperor is naked. World Health Organization data has our system ranked 30th in the world; Morocco beat us. This is nothing to be proud of.
There are a myriad of countries that run parallel public and private health-care systems that provide timely, quality care to folks on both lists. It’s not a mystery, and we could adapt our current system to do this.
Throwing more money in to the current malfunctioning mess will not work.
I think this kind of change will take two things:
• Courageous leadership from our politicians: the willingness to prioritize being in service to people over being easily re-electable.
• Putting the patient’s voice first: there are professional organizations for physicians and nurses, and we hear from them a lot.
Where is the professional organization that speaks for all of the folks waiting unconscionable times for care? We don’t have one now, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t create one.
I worked in the health-care system for 34 years, so have had the opportunity to see what keeps the system functioning.
It is the network of relationships between doctors, nurses, therapists, technicians, housekeepers and food service workers.
Every day they show up on the unit ready to face the challenges of staff shortages, outdated and poor equipment, frazzled patients and families. They do it because they care about the work they do and the difference it can make in someone’s life.
They do it because they care about supporting each other through some wicked working conditions.
The pandemic has shown us that we cannot continue to rely on the sheer guts of the folks who work in the current system as enough to scrape through.
So back to my point: If it’s “my body, my choice” and my hip is still part of my body, then we need to create a system where access to hip surgery and many, many other things is truly my choice and not one imposed by government.
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