As I approach the midway point of my eighth decade, few things terrify me as much as the prospect of ending my days in a Catholic hospital. Not that other religiously affiliated hospitals are a whole lot better, it's just that the Catholic hospitals are the worst.
I'm at the dawn of my sixth, but in poor health and I fear much the same thing, exacerbated by the fact I live in a state that doesn't allow Medical Assistance in Dying from any hospital.
Your worst nightmare: being in the ICU intubated and having a mid-level provider wearing a big cross tell you she'll be your doctor to save you. Then she genuflects and starts praying in front of you, and asks you if you'd like her to pass on any questions to God.
Would likely run afoul of the Free Exercise clause, especially with this SCOTUS.
Plus that would close thousands of hospitals, several of which probably don't break even financially and need outside sources of money. We'd need plans to replace them. And we know how much our governments like to pay for healthcare.
In my two-hospital birthplace, the one Catholic hospital shut down about 20 years ago because the diocese couldn't afford to keep it open anymore (a benefit when fewer and fewer people go to church or affiliate with a religion is, of course, fewer "offerings" in the basket.} When I was a Muslim and lived in the Buffalo area, I personally attended at least 3 mosques that were shut down Catholic churches which were sold to the Muslim community. Catholicism isn't very robust in America anymore. I was a Catholic as a child, and found it oppressive, boring and a waste of time.
This needs to become federal law as fast as can be managed. While quite a bit of this mostly applies to women's health care, men are not exempted and the public deserves to know the truth from the medical community - religious or otherwise. I'm disappointed that the medical community isn't doing this already on its own.
I've said previously several times that I'd like to see religion removed from medical care of all kinds, that hasn't changed. I still regard this sort of transparency as a good step in the right direction, and I'm really hoping this bill passes. I just worry about the number of 'other' religious medical facilities around, it's not like the RCC is the only one pulling this particular stunt.
When the Catholic Church held the power of life and death, they tortured and murdered anyone they saw as a threat. I can't say I have any sympathy for the idea they're being persecuted for having to be up front with what they do and do not cover.
Not just people they saw as a threat... but also anybody they could scapegoat to keep the masses' attention off their own shady doings with a good 'ol auto-da-fé.
Just started reading Kertzer's "The Popes Against the Jews." The kkkatlik superstition has always been persecuted by Jews. If you don;t believe it, just ask any pope.
OT - More proof repubs are too stupid to think, or to be blunt, Texass conservatives like taking a shit in their own mouths
“𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭? 𝐈’𝐦 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐃𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞.”
There’s a quiet new crisis brewing in Texas following the abortion ban. It could get much worse.
This is all happening as Texans can’t afford to lose more access to medical care. In 2022, 15 percent of the state’s 254 counties had no doctor, according to data from the state health department, and about two-thirds had no OB-GYN. Texas has one of the most significant physician shortages in the country, with a shortfall that is expected to increase by more than 50 percent over the next decade, according to the state’s projections. The shortage of registered nurses, around 30,000, is expected to nearly double over the same period. Already, Texans in large swaths of the state must drive hours for medical care, including to give birth. According to recent research from the nonprofit March of Dimes, it is among the worst states for maternity care access, which has decreased in a dozen Texas counties in the past two years, mostly due to a loss of obstetrics providers.
<snip>
Charles Brown, the ACOG chair, worries that absent clarity and changes from state leaders, a mass exodus could soon occur. “We have not had the front-page photo of the doctor in handcuffs yet. When that happens, I think that will be the napalm,” he said. “Once that first arrest is on the front page of the paper, that will be a defining moment for a lot of people.”
As I said the other day, too many tax breaks. They won't leave until they can't get anyone to move here and lose employees to out of state jobs. Most people when offered a job look at housing costs, taxes, grocery bills, etc. They just assume there are doctors, it never occurs to them to check.
Action like this is so badly overdue, I'm not sure there are words to express it. It's valuable for two reasons:
1. It provides valuable information to anyone wishing to get services from a Catholic hospital.
2. It puts on public display the efforts that Catholic hospitals have historically used to superimpose their belief system on the people they treat.
Personally, I think that second point is as important as the first. Hemant and others have written repeatedly about incidents in Catholic hospitals, regarding failure to perform live-saving procedures, because they supposedly violate Catholic doctrine. This tends to focus particularly on women who have dangerous pregnancies which may threaten their lives, though I would also wonder about a circumstance where a man might have a cancerous testicle which would require removal and potentially make him infertile. Haven't heard such a case, yet, but it wouldn't surprise me. The RCC's obsession with Life Über Alles flies in the face of the Hippocratic injunction to "First, Do No Harm," and indeed does an immense disservice to anyone opting for such a facility
As with so many other articles, followup here I think is essential. Let's see where this goes.
OMG! Persecution. I hope this puts a big dent in the catlick hospital revenues. Their federal funding should be eliminated unless they offer complete health care services to all with no religious bullshit.
"Catholic hospitals and health systems receive nearly $48 billion of taxpayer dollars each year, in the form of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, while seeking expansion of government permission to use religious doctrine to restrict care."
How do we serve the Medicare/Medicaid patients in areas where there may not be a non-Catholic hospital for a hundred miles? We need a plan to get rid of religious hospitals altogether which means convincing our state governments to subsidize hospitals, mostly rural, that don't get enough "business" to break even financially.
Given the USCCB's track record they'd likely shutdown the hospitals rather than conform to best medical practice if we tried to mandate that. (Which I seriously doubt our SCOTUS would allow, they've pretty much proven that "your" religion is more important than *my* life)
Most of these catlick hospitals wouldn't exist without federal funding. They must be forced to serve all patients for any legal treatment without any religulous consideration.
As I said, they'd shutdown first. Then who takes over the hospital? Medicare and Medicaid don't provide enough money to keep small hospitals afloat and millions of people don't have multiple hospitals to choose from.
I agree that we need all hospitals to provide the full range of medical care, but it's not as simple as making a law to force religious-run hospitals to do so. There are foreseeable consequences that must be dealt with.
It's the same with Universal Healthcare. It would put Health Insurance companies out of business (not that I would shed a tear) which would leave millions unemployed. The financial impact has to be planned for and mitigated.
I certainly want these things, but implementing them will take planning and Zeus knows our politicians aren't capable of that. And a large percentage of them don't want to be. It's going to take pre-written bills by multi-discipline groups of very smart people to even have a chance. (And probably, the death of the Republican Party)
How hard could it be? Civilized countries in West Europe and some other countries was able to. But of course, some right wing politicians have looked too hard to USA and try to demolish the system.
Then they shutdown. If they aren't providing services then those patients denied care for 'religious reasons' are not getting treated anyway. There is always upheaval with any societal change. Will people be inconvenienced? Absolutely. Will some people die? Yes. People die now because they can't afford health insurance, even as the feds pump cash into hospitals, many of which are for profit corps.
I'm okay with vast swaths of health insurance companies going under. Their greed and the profit based system is a major factor in why we pay the most for health care in the world and get the least. Maybe hospitals closing will wake up the rubes who keep voting for knuckledraggers who continually screw them over to own the libs but I doubt it, they'll just blame 'libruls'.
Huh ? We have both Sécurité Sociale and private insurance, we don't pay the astronomical medical costs you do and yet we have good healthcare and insurance companies aren't bankrupt.
This is terrific, but it's not hard to envision what the USCCB's court challenge will look like. They'll try to claim this is compelled speech, and therefore unconstitutional. And I have to admit that I see some small validity to that argument. But any reasonable court would find that the benefits to human health and well-being, aka quality of life--what the constitution calls "the general welfare"--far outweigh that concern.
Wait, did I say "reasonable court"? Well, I'm old enough to remember when we used to have those. You know, back in the days of black and white TV. Are you?
I have a large hospital a few blocks away from me. Back in antenna days, I would see a shadow in the shape of the hospital as seen from my window on a local, somewhat weak-signaled, channel. It couldn't have been an optical shadow since the television screen did not face the window and the image showed up on that channel even when the blinds were down and the curtains closed.
I assumed the shape was interference from all the electrical equipment in the hospital.
I remember seeing absolutely enormous antennas on peoples' houses in Atwater CA when I served the Stateside portion of my time at Castle Air Force Base in the early '70s.
Of course, that was long before cable, satellite dishes, etc. I can imagine those antennas are long since gone.
GL was my favorite comic book hero when I was a kid. I found him sexy as hell, and I can't tell you how I envied his sidekick Pieface. Comic books were my secret porn till I was old enough to buy "physique magazines."
Then they'd best get used to having their Mall Ninja asses handed to them by drag queens and leather daddies... I mean, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺- the event they were trying to scare off was being held a few blocks over from 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭; the whole-ass NYPD wasn't enough to make 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 community lie down and take it.
That one guy crying for mommy after he picked a fight and got a bloody nose just takes the cake, though. Poster child for the FAFO club VIP (Very Ignorant Prick) section, right there...
As I wouldn't go to a Catholic Church for an operation (or anything else, for that matter), Catholic hospitals need to actually provide the services that secular hospitals provide or get out of the business and stick to what they know best: teaching lies to gullible people and very young children.
There are over 600 Catholic hospitals in the US, and a lot of people don't have a choice. They also own hundreds of nursing homes, mental health and rehab facilities
I was out for a walk in the bush today with the usual mate, and he told me about it his sister who like all his family went to a Catholic school. In England. They used to send a van round to screen for TB, and when it arrived at his sister's school, they went through and nobody had until they came to one class. 30 out of 45 kids had TB. And funnily enough it was worse in the smaller kids who sat towards the front of the room. Turns out the nun had been turning up to work after coughing blood up when she got up, and decided that God would take care of it. The mate's sister was okay eventually, but 10 of those kids' lungs were scarred for life.
As I approach the midway point of my eighth decade, few things terrify me as much as the prospect of ending my days in a Catholic hospital. Not that other religiously affiliated hospitals are a whole lot better, it's just that the Catholic hospitals are the worst.
I'm at the dawn of my sixth, but in poor health and I fear much the same thing, exacerbated by the fact I live in a state that doesn't allow Medical Assistance in Dying from any hospital.
I wish you all the best.
Your worst nightmare: being in the ICU intubated and having a mid-level provider wearing a big cross tell you she'll be your doctor to save you. Then she genuflects and starts praying in front of you, and asks you if you'd like her to pass on any questions to God.
This is de rigueur at your nearest St. Mary's Hospital.
I have a much better idea. Make it illegal for any religious organization to have anything to do with people's healthcare.
Would likely run afoul of the Free Exercise clause, especially with this SCOTUS.
Plus that would close thousands of hospitals, several of which probably don't break even financially and need outside sources of money. We'd need plans to replace them. And we know how much our governments like to pay for healthcare.
In my two-hospital birthplace, the one Catholic hospital shut down about 20 years ago because the diocese couldn't afford to keep it open anymore (a benefit when fewer and fewer people go to church or affiliate with a religion is, of course, fewer "offerings" in the basket.} When I was a Muslim and lived in the Buffalo area, I personally attended at least 3 mosques that were shut down Catholic churches which were sold to the Muslim community. Catholicism isn't very robust in America anymore. I was a Catholic as a child, and found it oppressive, boring and a waste of time.
I found it dangerous to my health as a Gay man
This needs to become federal law as fast as can be managed. While quite a bit of this mostly applies to women's health care, men are not exempted and the public deserves to know the truth from the medical community - religious or otherwise. I'm disappointed that the medical community isn't doing this already on its own.
I've said previously several times that I'd like to see religion removed from medical care of all kinds, that hasn't changed. I still regard this sort of transparency as a good step in the right direction, and I'm really hoping this bill passes. I just worry about the number of 'other' religious medical facilities around, it's not like the RCC is the only one pulling this particular stunt.
I'm hugely grateful that I get top-notch government-run healthcare from the VA and not from the religion of Mother Teresa.
She was a vile creature. I almost wish there was a hell for her to burn in.
I imagine that every time her name is mentioned, people here rightfully gnash their teeth and curse the day she was born.
Calling what she did healthcare without an /s marker is a very serious error.
Sitting at my local CBOC waiting for my appointment....and agreeing with you 100%.
Love my gub'mint-run healthcare. 😁
How would they treat testicular cancer? Let it go? Stick voodoo needles in it?
They'd just let a priest come in and suck it, I'll bet.
That's only policy for the pediatric ward.
It may not in any way be an anti religious bill but just wait for the cries of persecution that are bound to follow. It’s in their DNA!
When the Catholic Church held the power of life and death, they tortured and murdered anyone they saw as a threat. I can't say I have any sympathy for the idea they're being persecuted for having to be up front with what they do and do not cover.
Not just people they saw as a threat... but also anybody they could scapegoat to keep the masses' attention off their own shady doings with a good 'ol auto-da-fé.
Asking a religion to tell the truth? Persecution!
Just started reading Kertzer's "The Popes Against the Jews." The kkkatlik superstition has always been persecuted by Jews. If you don;t believe it, just ask any pope.
The Inquisition(s) beg to differ with the Pontiff(s).
The Inquisition
Let's begin
The Inquisition
Look out sin
Was going to post the video. :)
The word "Pontiff" (Pontifex) is another thing catholics stole to Pagans.
Christians must have learned how to steal from the Romans, as the Romans stole from the Greek pantheon of gods/demigods.
Catholics and Majipoorians.
OT - More proof repubs are too stupid to think, or to be blunt, Texass conservatives like taking a shit in their own mouths
“𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭? 𝐈’𝐦 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐃𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞.”
There’s a quiet new crisis brewing in Texas following the abortion ban. It could get much worse.
This is all happening as Texans can’t afford to lose more access to medical care. In 2022, 15 percent of the state’s 254 counties had no doctor, according to data from the state health department, and about two-thirds had no OB-GYN. Texas has one of the most significant physician shortages in the country, with a shortfall that is expected to increase by more than 50 percent over the next decade, according to the state’s projections. The shortage of registered nurses, around 30,000, is expected to nearly double over the same period. Already, Texans in large swaths of the state must drive hours for medical care, including to give birth. According to recent research from the nonprofit March of Dimes, it is among the worst states for maternity care access, which has decreased in a dozen Texas counties in the past two years, mostly due to a loss of obstetrics providers.
<snip>
Charles Brown, the ACOG chair, worries that absent clarity and changes from state leaders, a mass exodus could soon occur. “We have not had the front-page photo of the doctor in handcuffs yet. When that happens, I think that will be the napalm,” he said. “Once that first arrest is on the front page of the paper, that will be a defining moment for a lot of people.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/texas-abortion-law-doctors-nurses-care-supreme-court.html
First thing I thought of was those Silicon Valley tech companies that relocated to Texas.
I wonder if any of them are now ruing that decision and thinking of pulling up stakes.
As I said the other day, too many tax breaks. They won't leave until they can't get anyone to move here and lose employees to out of state jobs. Most people when offered a job look at housing costs, taxes, grocery bills, etc. They just assume there are doctors, it never occurs to them to check.
Nope...doubling down.
I can't remember where I read that childbirth, pre and postnatal care were atrocious in texass and it was several years before dobbs.
I don’t belong to your book club, its rules should never be applied to me. If you aren’t willing to provide healthcare, don’t get into healthcare.
Action like this is so badly overdue, I'm not sure there are words to express it. It's valuable for two reasons:
1. It provides valuable information to anyone wishing to get services from a Catholic hospital.
2. It puts on public display the efforts that Catholic hospitals have historically used to superimpose their belief system on the people they treat.
Personally, I think that second point is as important as the first. Hemant and others have written repeatedly about incidents in Catholic hospitals, regarding failure to perform live-saving procedures, because they supposedly violate Catholic doctrine. This tends to focus particularly on women who have dangerous pregnancies which may threaten their lives, though I would also wonder about a circumstance where a man might have a cancerous testicle which would require removal and potentially make him infertile. Haven't heard such a case, yet, but it wouldn't surprise me. The RCC's obsession with Life Über Alles flies in the face of the Hippocratic injunction to "First, Do No Harm," and indeed does an immense disservice to anyone opting for such a facility
As with so many other articles, followup here I think is essential. Let's see where this goes.
OMG! Persecution. I hope this puts a big dent in the catlick hospital revenues. Their federal funding should be eliminated unless they offer complete health care services to all with no religious bullshit.
"Catholic hospitals and health systems receive nearly $48 billion of taxpayer dollars each year, in the form of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, while seeking expansion of government permission to use religious doctrine to restrict care."
http://www.communitycatalyst.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2020-Cath-Hosp-Report-2020-31.pdf
How do we serve the Medicare/Medicaid patients in areas where there may not be a non-Catholic hospital for a hundred miles? We need a plan to get rid of religious hospitals altogether which means convincing our state governments to subsidize hospitals, mostly rural, that don't get enough "business" to break even financially.
Given the USCCB's track record they'd likely shutdown the hospitals rather than conform to best medical practice if we tried to mandate that. (Which I seriously doubt our SCOTUS would allow, they've pretty much proven that "your" religion is more important than *my* life)
Most of these catlick hospitals wouldn't exist without federal funding. They must be forced to serve all patients for any legal treatment without any religulous consideration.
As I said, they'd shutdown first. Then who takes over the hospital? Medicare and Medicaid don't provide enough money to keep small hospitals afloat and millions of people don't have multiple hospitals to choose from.
I agree that we need all hospitals to provide the full range of medical care, but it's not as simple as making a law to force religious-run hospitals to do so. There are foreseeable consequences that must be dealt with.
It's the same with Universal Healthcare. It would put Health Insurance companies out of business (not that I would shed a tear) which would leave millions unemployed. The financial impact has to be planned for and mitigated.
I certainly want these things, but implementing them will take planning and Zeus knows our politicians aren't capable of that. And a large percentage of them don't want to be. It's going to take pre-written bills by multi-discipline groups of very smart people to even have a chance. (And probably, the death of the Republican Party)
How hard could it be? Civilized countries in West Europe and some other countries was able to. But of course, some right wing politicians have looked too hard to USA and try to demolish the system.
Then they shutdown. If they aren't providing services then those patients denied care for 'religious reasons' are not getting treated anyway. There is always upheaval with any societal change. Will people be inconvenienced? Absolutely. Will some people die? Yes. People die now because they can't afford health insurance, even as the feds pump cash into hospitals, many of which are for profit corps.
I'm okay with vast swaths of health insurance companies going under. Their greed and the profit based system is a major factor in why we pay the most for health care in the world and get the least. Maybe hospitals closing will wake up the rubes who keep voting for knuckledraggers who continually screw them over to own the libs but I doubt it, they'll just blame 'libruls'.
Huh ? We have both Sécurité Sociale and private insurance, we don't pay the astronomical medical costs you do and yet we have good healthcare and insurance companies aren't bankrupt.
This is terrific, but it's not hard to envision what the USCCB's court challenge will look like. They'll try to claim this is compelled speech, and therefore unconstitutional. And I have to admit that I see some small validity to that argument. But any reasonable court would find that the benefits to human health and well-being, aka quality of life--what the constitution calls "the general welfare"--far outweigh that concern.
Wait, did I say "reasonable court"? Well, I'm old enough to remember when we used to have those. You know, back in the days of black and white TV. Are you?
Can you get up and change the channel please? Also hold up the rabbit ears so we get a good signal.
Those were the days. Back when snow was interference in your TV reception, not something you snorted.
I have a large hospital a few blocks away from me. Back in antenna days, I would see a shadow in the shape of the hospital as seen from my window on a local, somewhat weak-signaled, channel. It couldn't have been an optical shadow since the television screen did not face the window and the image showed up on that channel even when the blinds were down and the curtains closed.
I assumed the shape was interference from all the electrical equipment in the hospital.
The good old time of rake antenna when it was nearly impossible to watch TV if you weren't in or near a town big enough (the 80's in France).
I remember seeing absolutely enormous antennas on peoples' houses in Atwater CA when I served the Stateside portion of my time at Castle Air Force Base in the early '70s.
Of course, that was long before cable, satellite dishes, etc. I can imagine those antennas are long since gone.
Satellite dishes were a big success. Cable not so much since I didn't live in a house or an apartment 😁
Do you mean TV or movie theaters when they aired non speaking movies ?
When I was a kid we still had magic lantern shows.
Just not (shudder) this: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1133985/mediaviewer/rm344202752/?ref_=tt_ov_i
I thought Deadpool did in Ryan Reynolds for taking the GL script.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6jx32u
GL was my favorite comic book hero when I was a kid. I found him sexy as hell, and I can't tell you how I envied his sidekick Pieface. Comic books were my secret porn till I was old enough to buy "physique magazines."
I happen to love that movie.
I saw some in a toy museum. They were quite cool :)
One comic author tried to recreate the same effect with his books but he wasn't successful.
Once again, those secularists have to keep the supposedly moral honest.
Finally a win for Drag Queen Story Hour
https://www.yahoo.com/news/proud-boys-retreat-bloodied-n-180939669.html
Those idiots 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 should've done their history homework before fucking with that neighborhood in particular.
On the other hand, it's 𝘸𝘢𝘺 funnier because they didn't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fkgjgBJKzk
History is too woke for inhumanly men.
Then they'd best get used to having their Mall Ninja asses handed to them by drag queens and leather daddies... I mean, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺- the event they were trying to scare off was being held a few blocks over from 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭; the whole-ass NYPD wasn't enough to make 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 community lie down and take it.
That one guy crying for mommy after he picked a fight and got a bloody nose just takes the cake, though. Poster child for the FAFO club VIP (Very Ignorant Prick) section, right there...
I loved this video, I can't wait to see more of them having their comeuppance.
As I wouldn't go to a Catholic Church for an operation (or anything else, for that matter), Catholic hospitals need to actually provide the services that secular hospitals provide or get out of the business and stick to what they know best: teaching lies to gullible people and very young children.
There are over 600 Catholic hospitals in the US, and a lot of people don't have a choice. They also own hundreds of nursing homes, mental health and rehab facilities
Sad, but true.
"The doctor is already performing surgery, so performing a tubal ligation actually lets you kill two birds with one stone."
Umm... I would suggest a better metaphor there.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the...um, nope.
A stitch in time saves nine?
https://bird-in-hand.com/
(Lovely little village, I've been. 👍)
Chill two stoned birds?
I was out for a walk in the bush today with the usual mate, and he told me about it his sister who like all his family went to a Catholic school. In England. They used to send a van round to screen for TB, and when it arrived at his sister's school, they went through and nobody had until they came to one class. 30 out of 45 kids had TB. And funnily enough it was worse in the smaller kids who sat towards the front of the room. Turns out the nun had been turning up to work after coughing blood up when she got up, and decided that God would take care of it. The mate's sister was okay eventually, but 10 of those kids' lungs were scarred for life.
Bitch wasn't praying hard enough........
"Dignity" Health? Not so much.
OT - 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐬 𝐓𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐁𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐀𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐍𝐨 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/abortion-pill-mifepristone-misoprostol-ban-fail.html
For those citing their bible...
There isn't one condemnation of abortion anywhere within the pages of that book. Believers have no scriptural basis for being anti-abortion.
In fact, as we all know, abortion is quite specifically endorsed in the book of Numbers.
The god of that book was quite the enthusiastic practitioner of abortion (see "great flood"), as were his demented soldiers (see Hosea 13:16).