Newsweek
About a decade ago, Elizabeth Miller remembers seeing a certain teenage girl at a hospital clinic for adolescents in Boston. The patient thought she might be pregnant and asked for a test. When it came out negative, Miller started asking the standard questions, inquiring as to whether her patient wanted to be pregnant (she didn't) and whether she was using contraceptives (she wasn't). So Miller explained all of the birth-control options and, as she describes it, "sent her on her merry way with a brown bag of condoms." It was, by most measures, a pretty routine appointment.
Except that, two weeks later, the same patient was back at the hospital, in the emergency room after her partner pushed her down the stairs. "That was the wake-up call where I started thinking there might be a relationship between the two situations," says Miller, now an assistant professor of pediatrics at University of California, Davis. "She was coming in for a pregnancy test, not wanting to be pregnant, and not wanting to use birth control. And now I'm wondering what's going on for her, knowing she was in a physically and sexually violent relationship. I started wondering whether I needed to be asking her about why [she isn't using birth control] at that visit." [...]
About a decade ago, Elizabeth Miller remembers seeing a certain teenage girl at a hospital clinic for adolescents in Boston. The patient thought she might be pregnant and asked for a test. When it came out negative, Miller started asking the standard questions, inquiring as to whether her patient wanted to be pregnant (she didn't) and whether she was using contraceptives (she wasn't). So Miller explained all of the birth-control options and, as she describes it, "sent her on her merry way with a brown bag of condoms." It was, by most measures, a pretty routine appointment.
Except that, two weeks later, the same patient was back at the hospital, in the emergency room after her partner pushed her down the stairs. "That was the wake-up call where I started thinking there might be a relationship between the two situations," says Miller, now an assistant professor of pediatrics at University of California, Davis. "She was coming in for a pregnancy test, not wanting to be pregnant, and not wanting to use birth control. And now I'm wondering what's going on for her, knowing she was in a physically and sexually violent relationship. I started wondering whether I needed to be asking her about why [she isn't using birth control] at that visit." [...]
Rav Eidensohn, you flesh out some very weighty issues that many might find allegorical to the frum olam.
ReplyDeleteFor better or worse, you are ahead of your time.
You know, there's a whole other sefer, with regard to unhealthy control by mosdos and in marriages and family.
The relationships are all interdependent.
As a brief example, R' Harry Maryles wrote today about the ease in which many charedim fall into violence. This could not and would not occur if there were no tacit approvals or blind eyes.
I suspect you'll be writing for a long while.