The Missouri Senate has reversed itself when it comes to the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. It was perfectly fine in the view of ruling Republicans for the state to intervene and for lawmakers with no background in women’s reproductive health to dictate the medical conditions under which doctors may perform abortions. But now the Senate says the doctor-patient relationship must be respected and left alone by lawmakers — as long as the doctor is a veterinarian and the patient is a cat.
In other words, Republican state senators believe that a cat should have more rights than a woman when it comes to a doctor’s care. The issue that apparently merits all this fuss about protecting the doctor-patient relationship revolves around cat declawing, the Post-Dispatch’s Jack Suntrup reports.
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The state Senate voted Monday to block St. Louis city and county from enforcing local ordinances against cat declawing. Animal rights activists say the procedure is inhumane, painful, medically unnecessary and leaves cats vulnerable if they manage to escape a home after having their claws removed.
As a part of state Republicans’ ongoing efforts to deny Missouri cities and counties the right to govern themselves, the Senate wants to dictate veterinary practices at a statewide level in the same way lawmakers won’t allow local governments to regulate industrial animal feeding operations or set more stringent rules on where guns may be carried, to name just two of numerous examples. Those same lawmakers are the first to complain about out-of-control big government when it’s the federal government dictating the rules. But when it comes to the state dictating which ordinances local jurisdictions may or may not enforce, out-of-control big government apparently is just fine.
The ultimate in legislative hypocrisy revolves around women’s bodily autonomy and their right to make the best medical decisions for themselves in consultation with their doctors. Even in cases of rape or incest, state lawmakers have decided that they, not medical doctors, know what’s best for women and girls. In fact, if a Missouri doctor performs an abortion, that person may be criminally prosecuted. Even in cases where the doctor deems an abortion to be medically necessary to save the mother’s life, the threat of prosecution has put a severe damper on that once-sacrosanct doctor-patient relationship.
But state Sen. Justin Brown, R-Rolla, insists that when it comes to veterinarians, it’s inappropriate for lawmakers to decide what’s medically necessary or not, and that local jurisdictions should not have the right to obstruct the practice of veterinary medicine.
“It interferes with the patient-client relationship with the practitioner,” Brown said. “I think that needs to be between the practicing veterinarian and the owner of the pet.” Last May, Brown cosponsored the state resolution to outlaw abortions in most cases if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — which it did that same month.