Kendall Stanley: Watching women die
I did everything I could.
That’s what an Ohio doctor thinks to himself as he works with women as a high-risk obstetrics physician.
With abortions now illegal in Ohio, how does David N. Hackney handle the cases that come his way?
“Diagnosing birth defects is what I do," Hackney said in an op-ed that was published in the New York Times. "Over the years many of my patients with lethal anomalies have elected to continue their pregnancies knowing that their children will die after delivery. These patients always have my full support. Sometimes this is in concurrence with their religious beliefs, though sometimes it’s simply meaningful for them to deliver and spend time with their child, even if only for minutes or hours. Most patients, however, elect to discontinue the pregnancy.”
And with that option now off the table, this is what his patients can expect.
“This patient will go through her third trimester visibly pregnant. Strangers in the grocery store will congratulate her. She will have to explain her story over and over again to friends, neighbors and co-workers. She will be forced to experience labor and delivery, and then her child will die. The risks of term delivery are far greater than the risk of abortion, so she may also experience hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, blood clots or other complications.
“Ohio’s new law is unimaginably cruel.”
And so this physician, and many others like him, are forced to offer what care they can to avoid suffering and in some cases, death.
So Hackney wonders, did I do enough? Make enough calls, engage enough legislators, testify at enough committee hearings?
Surely he probably did, but anti-abortion activists will have none of it. No rape or incest exemptions, no life of the mother exemptions, no abortions, period.
Cruel, indeed.
The one and only
You know you’ve achieved some notoriety when over time you become known by a single name. Think Ali or Picasso.
And thus it was for Luciano “Luch” Duse, photographer extraordinaire who died last week at 80.
Everyone knew him as Luciano or Luch and they knew his work as his studio on Lake Street had windows full of scenes from around the world, panoramas of Petoskey, people places and things that caught his photographer’s eye.
He started taking pictures of tourists on the San Marco square in his native Venice. That was where he met Lynn McCartney. After a summer-long love affair she had to return to Petoskey, but after some contact back and forth, Luch traveled to America and tracked Lynn down.
He had a rough go of it at first, his obituary noted, since his English was poor, he didn’t know how to drive and snow was unfamiliar to him (he got used to it being a photographer at Boyne Mountain and then Boyne Highlands).
The son of a tailor he was always impeccably dressed and lunch during his working days downtown was at the Perry Hotel a mere stroll up the street from his studio.
Beyond his family he had three great loves in his life – wine, cheesecake and smoking. Man did Luch love his smoking! An iconic photo in anyone’s mind who knew him was Luch standing on the corner outside his studio smoking a cigarette and watching the world go by.
As to the wine, how could Jesperson’s serve lunch without wine to go with it? I mean really! No wine?
He attended art shows around the country and there are photos hanging on many a wall in many places that came out of his studio and art show tent.
Because of his winter picture of Petoskey from the hill south of town he will forever be remembered for his work and his life here.
Addio Luciano.
— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: Watching women die
