Opinion: Bill repealing women's health laws worst of year

It is no secret that I find Alabama's conservative-dominated legislature to be comically self-indulgent, irritatingly shortsighted and severely selfish.

But I don't think of our lawmakers as bad guys.

Misguided, sure. Maybe even greedy and uncaring at times. But not overall bad guys.

Then SB289 came along -- the most awful bill of the year.

If you haven't heard of this senate bill, it will surely be discussed at length in the coming weeks. On its face, it is a simple, two-page piece of legislation that repeals two laws.

Those laws: a requirement that doctors send written notifications to women whose mammograms show they have dense breast tissue and a requirement that insurance companies operating in Alabama establish minimum coverage lengths for childbirth.

A little background: In 2013, former longtime Sen. Roger Bedford pushed a bill that required the state's doctors to supply written notification to patients with dense breast tissue.

According to the Are You Dense organization and doctors, dense tissue can obscure small cancers, making them undetectable on standard mammograms. The presence of dense tissue can itself be an indicator for a slightly elevated risk of breast cancer, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

The problem was doctors sometimes weren't informing their patients of these things, as Nancy Cappello discovered.

Cappello, who founded Are You Dense, followed medical protocol and her yearly mammograms came back cancer-free for years. They also showed dense breast tissue – something she discovered just after being informed that she had stage-3 breast cancer.

She also learned that her doctors had been informed of her dense tissue for years by radiologists, but they never bothered to pass the info along to her. So, Cappello set out to change that.

Her organization has now helped get notification legislation passed in 21 states.

In Alabama, it was Bedford, whose wife is a breast cancer survivor, who worked with the Medical Association of the State of Alabama (MASA), and others, to make this notification a requirement when mammograms detect dense breast tissue:

"Your mammogram shows that your breast tissue is dense. Dense breast tissue is very common and is not abnormal. However, dense breast tissue may make it harder to find cancer on a mammogram and may also be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. This information about the result of your mammogram is given to you to raise your awareness. Use this information to talk to your doctor about your own risks for breast cancer. At that time, ask your doctor if more screening tests might be useful, based on your risk. A report of your results was sent to your physician."

A fair, level letter that simply informs patients.

The notification doesn't require, or even recommend, additional testing, and as MASA points out on its website, it doesn't produce increased liability for doctors.

In addition to this law, Alabama also requires that insurance companies cover a minimum hospital stay of 48 hours for a standard childbirth and 96 hours for more complicated births.

Those requirements are also present in the federal Mothers and Newborns Act passed by Congress in 1996.

SB289 seeks to repeal both of those laws.

No more letters. No more minimum stays.

The bill is sponsored by seven wome … nope, wait, sorry. It's sponsored by seven old dudes: Sens. Larry Stutts, Paul Bussman, Bill Hightower, Tim Melson, Jim McClendon, Rusty Glover and Jabo Waggoner. (Because who doesn't want a guy named "Jabo" making your medical decisions for you?)

Two of those men are medical doctors.

The arguments against the laws are simple: The letters can alarm some women and they will likely result in an uptick in additional screenings, such as MRIs or sonograms, and some mothers don't need to stay in the hospital 48 hours and are having to sign several forms to be released early.

That is all nonsense, of course.

The information about dense breast tissue is the patient's information. She paid for it. It's hers. There is no legitimate reason that she shouldn't be informed or that a doctor operating in this country should feel anything less than obligated by law to provide her with that information. As for the minimum stay law, really, just shut up. If men gave birth, there would be a minimum requirement of a week's stay at a golf resort.

SB289 is a hateful piece of legislation that benefits only one group: insurance companies that pay for hospital stays and cancer screenings. Their bottom lines are apparently more important than women's health.

Gotta say, you guys are starting to change my opinion of the Alabama Legislature.

And just when I thought it couldn't be lower.