Lopez: Think beyond politics

I made a rookie mistake. I was in a hotel room in Ohio five days before the upcoming presidential election and I turned the TV on. MSNBC and CNN were all about the "fascist" "barbaric" Donald Trump, and Fox News seemed to be in another world.

CNN and MSNBC were focusing on stories about women in states with abortion restrictions. They were truly harrowing, intimately painful stories. One Georgia woman talked with Mika Brzezinski about how her baby was dying two weeks before, and doctors delayed intervention because they were afraid state law would lead to prosecution. On CNN, a husband talked about how his wife almost died in Texas. What was clear — and has been — is that lawyers are running the show in hospitals. Lawyers should not be making medical decisions. I'm no fan or defender of Donald Trump, but he has very little to do with these terrible cases. Lawyers do. And doctors shouldn't let that be the case.

Not to be quaint, but remember the Hippocratic Oath? Doctor, do no harm. The woman in Georgia said that the health of her fetus had been prioritized over her. She said the protocol was to ignore her as a patient even though she had a blood clot the size of a dinner plate. She should have been treated immediately, as I understand the situation.

Politics is the worst lens through which to think about the most intimate issues of our lives. And yet we must. But it does such damage to people who are already grieving, suffering from the loss of a child.

That Georgia mother on MSNBC broke my heart. First, the death of her baby. Second, that she could not take time to grieve the loss of her child. It's not natural. It's unspeakably wrong. And politics isn't going to help her.

The Republicans have not been helpful on these matters lately, but old-school Democrats know better. So many of them were once against abortion, but surrendered to Planned Parenthood and other abortion-industry pressure.

In these years now after the repeal of Roe, the pressure has turned to outright lies. Again: A miscarriage is not an abortion. If a pregnant woman has cancer or sepsis, a doctor can and should treat her. Doctors need to fight back against the lawyers, and we need to have the doctors' and the patients' backs.

Another rookie mistake was watching the political conventions. The Democrats had lots of tragic stories about what the end of Roe meant for women. Meanwhile, the Republicans promised free in vitro fertilization. Again, here politics wades into the most hurtful issues. Abortion. Miscarriage. Infertility. All extremely different sufferings. And yet all involving children.

And it's far from just abortion that is plaguing us and poisoning our medical culture.

So, what do we do about this? Reject ideological silos, as Pope Francis has put it. There are clear sides, which I'm quite aware of as a conservative who has spent perhaps too much — or not enough — time outside abortion clinics watching misery unfold. It was pointed out to me recently that genocide isn't a matter for casual conversation. And it also doesn't seem real for anyone who hasn't experienced it or is in denial about it.

But there's so much pressure to be in denial about it, or to be totally ignorant of it entirely.

We must do better. Politics has no incentives for meeting on common ground, but we need to insist on it. And we can start in ways close to home. Helping a mom in need. Fostering a teenager who felt like no one wanted him. Whether you identify as pro-life or pro-choice, get creative in your charity. Politics won't save us. So quit putting all our eggs in that basket. Resist the urge to simply be angry, the biggest rookie mistake of all.

klopez@nationalreview.com