How Afraid Of Nurses Should We Be?
And: Surprising Public Turn On Migration; Christian Jew-Hating; Coming Church Crash
On the tweet from which I took the above image, we can hear a labor and delivery nurse named Lexie Lawler wishing horrific things on Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, who is pregnant. She says on the video she posted to social media, about Leavitt’s delivery: "I hope you f*cking rip from bow to stern and never sh*t normally again, you c*nt." Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo removed the deranged Lawler’s license to practice nursing in Florida. That psycho should never come near vulnerable patients again.
This week, X has seen chilling videos of nurses saying terrifying things about what they would do to ICE agents should ICE agents come under their care. One of our readers here, a personal friend of mine, sent this account of what happened to her. I’ve slightly anonymized it, for her safety:
In 2021 I delivered a boy in one of the 2 busiest hospitals in [city]. Our other children were delivered at smaller hospitals outside the city, but our previous hospital had closed their L&D wing because it wasn’t profitable enough, and so my former practice was shifting location and all pregnant mothers were asked to temporarily use this hospital. My birth was a gruesome rapid labor and the doctor from my actual practice ended up not showing, so I was delivered by a strange team who at first had no idea who I was or any info on my previous care. It was a mess. After delivery the young nurse refused to bring a doctor back in when I thought something was wrong; eventually I insisted and the doctor realized I was beginning to hemorrhage. Later on I was being wheeled to a recovery room and noticed two nurses at the nurses station had Facebook up on their computer screens. I thought it odd they were using social media on work computers. Likely it was just personal stuff, but I remembered it later for obvious reasons.
My final nurse was a woman of about 30 who was initially very friendly, chatty, and surprisingly curious about me. She came back in for discharge with a completely different demeanor. Cold, hostile, silent. It was such a huge change that I felt nervous. The animosity as she wheeled me and my son to the exit was palpable. But I was leaving with a healthy baby and didn’t want to think about the nurse’s behavior, however dark and confusing it left the last hour of our stay.
Two days later I was at home holding my son on a Saturday morning when the phone rang from an unknown number. I thought it might be my friend living overseas calling to ask about the baby, so I answered it. A bright female voice, which in retrospect I think was that of my discharge nurse, said, “Is this [name]?” Yes, I replied. “Congratulations! We’ve just made a $1000 donation to Planned Parenthood in your name” (and here the voice switched from bright to snarling) “YOU F*CKING BITCH. ALSO, YOU ------” I am leaving that part blank because it was so shocking and horrible that I still have never managed to repeat it. She made a brief but give-away allusion to the private details of the birth which when I was calmer allowed me to identify it as someone from the hospital; she then added some more curse words, called me a cunt, and hung up on me.
I sat there shaking. My husband was out with our other kids at teeball. I felt so vulnerable. At first I couldn’t process who had done it, or why. This person knew my name - so they also must be able to find my address. I just sat there holding my newborn and reeling, terrified. I spoke to a friend on X who helped me piece together what had happened - I had written an essay for [a conservative publication] critical of abortion just a few weeks earlier. The chief of staff for Senator Hawley had even shared it. At that time, if you googled my name it was the first thing to come up. What seems to have happened is one of the nurses googled my name, found the article, was enraged by my pro-life position, had access to me private contact info, then waited till I was home to call and intimidate me anonymously. My last nurse is the one I guessed at, though the substance of the last insults meant it could have been any one on the schedule who was aware of the hemorrhaging.
Of course I should have immediately called the hospital to investigate. I confess to cowardice. I was afraid of retaliation. This woman was crazy enough to call me at home. She had access to my contact info, which means my address. What if she lost her job and blamed me? What else was she capable of? For weeks I would look out the windows to the street with fear. Mother’s Day was around the corner - since this was about my pro-life article, would there be more harassment? So I did not report what happened immediately, though after enough time had passed I contacted the health network and shared a few bare details, asking them to improve their oversight of social media policy and reinforce neutral standards of care.
In the following weeks I looked up information and general social media talk about nurses & social media usage, and learned that some (obviously not all or even most, but enough to be scary) nurses create exclusive groups to gossip about patients, even creating & sharing “red flag lists” based on whatever crimes the nurses think patients have committed — which can range from being genuinely disrespectful to simply having different political opinions. It seems like an extension of “MeToo” network support — they believe they’re protecting one another by sharing patient info in order to help nurses “stay safe.”
The flexibility of Woke Justice Theory means a pro-life woman like myself can put a pro-abortion nurse “at risk.” People like me are unworthy of care because our mere existence “triggers” stress in progressive nurses. I read nurses who were aware of those groups had talked about their existence publicly, but it didn’t seem like the problem was making it to the public in 2021 and I haven’t tried to find out more info specifically on these private lists. But I have continued to follow stories on nursing culture closely: just a few months ago there was an OB-GYN office in CA that had to fire most of their nurses because they were taking pictures of the exam room after patients had left and blasting them on TikTok for laughs. There were thousands of likes and at least half a dozen nurses participating. These are actual red flags that there is a collapse of ethics in nursing which is being ignored by healthcare and hospital networks.
I can’t remove previous things I’ve written from the internet (while of course I shouldn’t have to, I would in a heartbeat if it means keeping protecting my family), but I do now lock my X account on days I get any medical treatment in case some nurse gets curious. I don’t know how you or other conservatives handle it. A lot of people are excited about firing these healthcare workers, and yes they do not belong in the field, but the problem is too big even with the worst offenders removed. There are too many healthcare workers who have been radicalized.
Maybe it would be better to have a huge effort towards de-radicalizing them: the equivalent of the woke trainings which got them so worked up, but this time for morality & ethics, for re-humanizing instead of de-humanizing. I’d like to see shows like Grey’s Anatomy and now The Pitt (the new woke doctor’s show set in Pittsburgh) removed from the air, or equal time to conservatives given on these channels so they could turn the temperature down. Of course that’s impossible, but even before this incident I used to joke that as nurses go so does the popular vote. They’re a true bellwether group: middle-class women who consume high volumes of media and pick up “vibes” almost by osmosis. If nursing culture can be healed, I believe the culture can be too.
This is genuinely terrifying. I am lucky, I guess, that my legal name is not the same as my byline, which is my lifelong nickname. That might give me some protection. But I do plan to move back to the US some day, and it scares me that now I will not be able to count on the nurses taking care of me in the hospital one day following professional ethics.
This brings to mind an incident back in 2004. My wife and I went to lunch with an old school friend, a female ob/gyn who had also married since we had last seen each other, many years prior. My wife was heavily pregnant with our second child. The lunch was fine, but as we parted in the parking lot, the doctor dressed me down viciously for being pro-life (she had read my writing). She felt entitled to lecture me for being against abortion, even as my pregnant wife stood next to us. I was stunned. We got into the car, and my wife cried at the cruelty of this. I’ve never thought of that old friend the same way again. I figured going into the lunch that as an ob/gyn and a liberal, my old friend was pro-abortion, and had probably done abortions herself. But she was an old friend, and I was happy to see her, and meet her husband. I never let politics interfere with friendship. But she didn’t see things like that — and this was 2004, long before the Great Awokening!
I’m going to put the letter above the paywall today, in case the letter can make it into the hands of a US journalist who has the time and the interest to investigate the radicalization of the healthcare profession would care to. Are there private “#MeToo-style lists that nurses share about patients? If so, that needs to be exposed and prosecuted, if HIPAA laws were broken. I can put you in touch with the author, in case she is interested in talking about her experience. Write me at roddreher — at — substack — dot — com.
It’s not just an American thing. Last year in Sydney, two Arab Muslim nurses were fired after posting to social media a video of them saying that they would harm any Israeli patients that came under their care. They were fired, but some Australian Jews are still afraid to go to the hospital.
Lots more content today below the paywall for subscribers. I wish you would become one! If not, please do share this post, so people can know what happened to my friend.
