Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Television Hits: Red State/FD, MED, PD

Tune into this coming year’s hit shows: The Red State franchise. nnStart with FD (Fire Department). Traditional FD shows feature squad romances, turf battles with PDs, faltering equipment, chili-fests, arson investigations, all with the backdrop of  burning buildings. We see bravery, fear, heroism, camaraderie.

We don’t see the new theme: nurturing.

This version, brought to you by the US Supreme Court, adds newborns to the plot-lines. Imagine: with alarms blaring, a side-bell rings: a newborn, wrapped in blood-drenched towels, stuffed in a laundry basket, waits. Part of the squad scrambles to find blankets, diapers, formula (do they have the right kind? Where is the sterilizer? Is there a woman on hand already nursing who can give this newbie a one-minute suckle?), while the rest scramble to ready the truck. Will they save the burning building? Will they rescue the inhabitants? Will they save the newborn?

Stay tuned for episode two, when they have rescued most of the inhabitants, but don’t know what to do with the screeching baby, who is turning blue. Is it the formula? Is the baby sick? The computer whiz is doing a med-line search. On a Sunday, they can’t reach anybody in social services; their supplies are dwindling; the most nurturing person - must it invariably be a woman? ( Stay tuned for a sexual discrimination lawsuit)  - is out on vacation.

Episode three: find out what happens to the baby, to the squabbling crew that didn’t sign up for nannyhood, to management’s response to the costs for formula, diapers, layettes.

Red State Med (Medical), also brought to you by this Supreme Court, begins with a woman, almost fully dilated, dropped off at the Emergency Room. We learn her backstory. She has an unemployed husband and three children. Their apartment has rodents, one child needs daily insulin, the landlord just raised the rent. She can barely afford food, let alone an illegal back alley abortion; and she can’t travel 500 miles to the nearest legal clinic.

Courtesy of a gracious Court, she can abandon this baby. Through the last few months, she has reassured her children that she is keeping them, but giving up their soon-to-be-born sibling. Yet, knowing she will not be responsible for the baby, and despondent about the pregnancy, she has been drinking heavily to get her through these months. The consequence: the newborn has fetal alcohol syndrome. Another consequence: the mother dies giving birth. The hospital staff must figure out what to do with the sick newborn.

As for the dead mother, while a catastrophe for her family, it is not unusual: maternal mortality in the United States is double that of the United Kingdom, France and Canada. As an epilogue, the show broadcasts a public service 800 number, urging viewers to dial in to adopt.

If Justice Amy Coney Barrett predicts correctly, the surge of would-be adoptive parents will meet the supply of abandoned infants. As Justice Alioto pointed out, the fetus has rights. Red State Med will show whether those rights extend beyond birth.

In Red State PD (Police Department), a mailman calls the precinct. He just delivered a suspicious package to a woman in a high-rise apartment. Not a bomb, but maybe abortion pills. She has been home from work the past few mornings. Is she pregnant? Is she buying abortifacients online?

The officers rush to meet the mailman at the high-rise. They dumpster-dive, but find no evidence. To search her apartment, they need a court order, which a judge readily grants. The suspicion warrants the warrant. When they enter, they find, in a wastebasket, telltale packaging. They also find a closet full of metal coat hangers, also suspicious.

The woman is at work, where they march in, identify her, read her her rights, and take her to the station. Then they question the likely-suspect abettors, including roommates, co-workers and family. They go to their “abortion” CIs — the confidential informants who hang around clinics to make note of pregnant women. A plea bargain ensues; the jails are too full with abortion-criminals. This woman loses her job, goes on home confinement with a mandated chastity belt.

Thanks to the United States Supreme Court, these shows may run for years.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2022

Populist.com