This post may run a bit longer than usual, but it is actually a brief discussion of various issues concerning common conceptions and misconceptions about our economy.

Economics is not a normal science—it may not even be a science at all. A real science relies on proofs, but in economics, there are few, if any.

It is an unholy meld of mathematics, psychology, philosophy, history, intuition, and fortune-telling, with a dollop of pure faith in self-anointed experts. 

So, with all that, we are forced to rely on experts — economists, politicians, and the media — to tell us the truth about money.

I. Laws and Dollars Are Not Physical Objects

In 1792, the new United States government passed several laws. One was the Mint Act, which created the U.S. dollar.

At the risk of being obvious, I’ll remind you that the Mint Act, and indeed all laws, has no physical existence. You cannot see, hear, taste, feel, or smell the Mint Act.

A law can be described, not sensed, as it is only a concept, not a physical entity.

Barring self-imposed limits, the federal government, as the creator of laws, could pass any number and kind of laws. Just as laws have no physical existence, the dollars that the laws create exist only as ephemeral numbers on balance sheets. You cannot see, hear, taste, feel, or smell a dollar.

In addition to coins, the Treasury has printed paper versions of currency.

Gold, silver, copper, and paper have never been money. They have always been nothing more than physical material used to create coins and dollar bills.

Gold, silver, and copper coins, and paper bills are bearer titles to dollars, signifying that the bearer is owed a dollar by the U.S. government. Just as a car title is not a car and a house title is not a house, coins and paper currency are not money.

They are government-issued IOUs. Gold, silver, and copper, but not paper, sometimes have been called the “backing” for a dollar in the same way a car is said to “back” a car title, and a house is said to “back” a house title.

But what happens if the car crashes, the house burns down, and the government arbitrarily changes the exchange value of coins and paper, which it has done many times throughout history? There goes the backing.

Despite having no physical existence, dollars have values. The government that created them arbitrarily assigns these values to dollars.

The following list shows the exchange value of the original dollars, values the government arbitrarily has changed many times over the years.

1. Eagles $10.00 247+4∕8 grain gold
2. Half eagles $5.00 123+6∕8 grain gold
3. Quarter eagles $2.50 61+7∕8 grain gold
4. Dollars or Units $1.00 371+4∕16 grain silver
5. Half dollars $0.50 185+10∕16 grain silver
6. Quarter dollars $0.25 92+13∕16 grain silver
7. Dimes $0.10 37+2∕16 silver
8. Half dismes $0.05 18+9∕16 grain silver
9. Cents $0.01 11 pennyweights copper
10. Half cents 0.005 5+1∕2 pennyweights copper

II.What Backs The Dollar?

The real backing for the house title, car title, and dollar bill is the full faith and credit of the signer. In the case of the dollar, the signer is the United States government.

Look at a dollar bill, and you will see that it is signed for the government by the Treasurer and the Secretary of the Treasury.

Coins are signed (engraved) by the United States of America.

It is the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, not gold, silver, or any other physical element, that always has backed the U.S. dollar.

But what is “full faith and credit”?

This may sound nebulous to some, but it actually involves certain, specific, and valuable guarantees, among which are:

A. –The government will accept only U.S. currency in payment of debts to the government (i.e., taxes, fines, etc.)
B. –It unfailingly will pay all its dollar debts with U.S. dollars and will not default
C. –It will force all your domestic creditors to accept U.S. dollars if you offer them to satisfy your debt.
D. –It will not require domestic creditors to accept any other currency
E. –It will take action to protect the value of the dollar.
F. –It will maintain a market for U.S. currency
G. –It will continue to use U.S. currency and will not change to another currency.
H. –All forms of U.S. currency will be reciprocal; that is, five $1 bills always will equal one $5 bill and vice versa.

If you trust the government, you accept its coins and paper currency; otherwise, you use some other currency. If you happen to trust gold more than you trust the U.S. government, you immediately will exchange all your dollars for gold.

All U.S. coins have two values — their face value and their material value. For example, what is a $10 gold coin worth?

At the latest valuation, it is worth both $10 in money and approximately $1,300 in barter. As money, a gold coin is worth neither more nor less than a paper $10 bill.

If a dollar has no physical existence, how can it be real? Many real things have no physical existence. Laws, patents and copyrights, sports scores, votes, numbers, poems, stories, etc., all are real but have no physical existence. 

Poems and stories are real, but they are represented by books and narration.

Laws are real, but you cannot see a law. You can see representations in books, or hear representations in court, but you cannot see a law.

Numbers are real, but you cannot see, feel, etc. them. Consider the number ten. What does it look like? Is it “ten?” “10”? “5+5”? “X”? “1010” ( in binary)? “12” (in octal)? “5×2”?

The list is literally endless because, like money, the number ten has no physical properties. Why is this important? Because money’s lack of physical properties, allows the federal government to create infinite amounts, unconstrained by any supply considerations.

Even if the federal government had no gold, no silver, no copper, or paper, it still could create infinite numbers of dollars and, as the issuer, give those dollars any value it chooses.

As the holder of a U.S. coin, you are a creditor to the U.S. government, which provided the coin in lieu of providing you with some physical thing. As a creditor to the U.S. government, you have provided a loan, which also is real but has no physical existence.

The fact that the U.S. dollar has no physical existence gives the government the infinite ability to create dollars. If the dollar had a physical existence, the dollar supply would be limited by the supply of the dollar’s “material.”

III. Monetary Sovereignty

You cannot begin to understand economics unless you understand the differences between a “Monetarily Sovereign.” entity and a monetarily non-sovereign entity.

The governments of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, and Australia are Monetarily Sovereign. They created and issued the money they and their citizens use, and they created all the laws regarding their money.

They cannot unintentionally run short of their own sovereign currency, which was created in accordance with their own laws. By writing all their own laws, they control all their own currencies.

So long as the U.S. federal government can create its laws, it can create dollars.

For example, the board game Monopoly purports to have Monopoly money in paper form. But it is not money. It represents money. The game could be played just as well without the paper “money” simply by keeping score. By rule, the “Bank” in the game of Monopoly is Monetarily Sovereign. It cannot run short of Monopoly dollars. (See: Monopoly).

You are not Monetarily Sovereign, nor is your city, county, or state, nor is any business or even a euro nation like Germany, France, and Italy. None can legally control the currencies they use.

Euro nations use euros, and their Monetarily Sovereign entity is the European Union.  

Politicians, economists, media writers, or laypeople who claim the U.S. federal government should “live within its means,” like you and I must, falsely compare the federal government’s monetary sovereignty with monetary non-sovereignty.

The federal government has no “means,” or rather, it has infinite “means.”

There is no amount of spending that is beyond the capability of the federal government to create dollars.

IV. Spending

The federal government cannot unintentionally run short of dollars. It creates dollars, ad hoc, by spending dollars. The process is:

1. A federal agency approves an invoice from a creditor. Then it sends instructions (not dollars) to the creditor’s bank, ordering the bank to increase the balance in the creditor’s checking account (“Pay to the order of _____”_.)
2. The instant the bank does as instructed, new dollars are created and added to the M2 money supply measure.
3. The bank then balances its books by clearing the transaction through the Federal Reserve, another federal government agency.

Thus, the federal government is in the enviable position of approving its own transactions. That is its superpower—the infinite ability to instruct banks to increase balances and thereby create new dollars.

That superpower means no amount of federal spending, debt or deficit can be “unsustainable,” as many people falsely claim. 

V. Taxes

Notice something else important: In steps 1 through 3, above, the word “tax” never is used.

Because the federal government has the infinite ability to create dollars, which it creates ad hoc by spending dollars, it does not use tax dollars for spending. In fact, your tax dollars are destroyed the moment they reach the U.S. Treasury.

When you pay taxes, you write a check. Your dollars come out of the nation’s M2 money supply measure.

But when the dollars reach the Treasury, they instantly disappear from the M2 money supply measure and are not found in any money supply measure. 

In short, they disappear. They effectively are destroyed by joining the Treasury’s infinite money supply. Adding dollars to infinite dollars still yields infinite dollars. That addition of your tax dollars to the Treasury’s supply of dollars does not increase the Treasury’s infinite supply of dollars.

Your federal tax dollars, which are not spent and are not part of any money supply, no longer exist. They have been destroyed.

VI. Why Levy Taxes?

State and local governments and euro-nation governments levy taxes to provide themselves with spending money. But the U.S. government creates its own spending money. So, what is the purpose of federal taxes?

1. To control the economy, the government taxes what it wishes to discourage and gives tax breaks to what it wishes to reward.

2. To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring all tax payments to be made in dollars.

There is a third “secret” purpose to U.S. taxation:

3. To help the very rich become richer.

There is an income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest of us. Without the Gap, no one would be rich; we all would be the same. Widening the Gap makes the rich richer.

Politicians, virtually all of whom are bribed (via campaign contributions and lucrative jobs), have designed federal tax laws at the behest of the rich to widen the Gap. 

FICA, for instance, is not collected on salaries above $160K. Why? The rich don’t want it.

Long-term capital gains are taxed at lower levels than salaries. Why? The rich receive much of their income via long-term capital gains.

Many tax breaks are available only to the rich. 

That is why someone like billionaire Donald Trump paid less in federal taxes than you probably did for the past ten years. For some years, he paid $0 while earning millions.

VII. Borrowing

If the federal government neither needs nor uses tax dollars for spending, why does it borrow dollars?

Earlier, we said that U.S. dollars are “government-issued IOUs.” While that might seem to indicate borrowing, it doesn’t. Borrowing requires a lender, and no one lends dollars to the federal government. 

The “IOU” refers to the federal government owing full faith and credit to every dollar user.

Often, the issuing of Treasury Securities (T-bills, T-notes, T-bonds) incorrectly is termed “borrowing.” But the purpose of T-securities. like federal taxes, is not to supply the government with spending money but rather:

1. To provide a safe place to store unused dollars, which helps stabilize the dollar and

2. To help the Federal Reserve control interest rates by providing a base rate for the world’s safest investment.

The misnamed, and thus misunderstood, “federal debt” is the total of outstanding deposits into T-security accounts. These accounts resemble bank safe deposit accounts in that the government does not touch the contents. 

When T-security accounts mature, the government pays them off simply by returning the contents, unused, exactly as it does with safe deposit boxes. In neither case has the government borrowed the contents.

By a quirk in the law, “federal debt” also refers to the net total of all previous federal deficits (the difference between taxes collected and spending). Here, too, the word “debt” is wrongly applied because the federal government does not owe its deficits.

It already has paid those bills. The government doesn’t owe what it already has paid. The word “deficit,” in this case, refers to the net number of growth dollars the federal government has sent into the American (and other) economies.

Running deficits is necessary for economic growth. Mathematically, we would have recessions without federal deficit spending. Gross Domestic Product – Federal Spending + Non-federal spending + Net Exports.

Because the U.S. traditionally has negative Net Exports and Inflation, the only way to generate real GDP growth is to increase economic spending, and that requires adding dollars to the economy — exactly what federal deficit spending does.

So, those who decry federal deficits and debt are simply wrong. Sadly, some of those people have been influenced by the very rich, who understand that most deficit spending narrows the income/wealth/power gap by benefiting the average American.

Those who do not understand Monetary Sovereignty claim the federal government, like businesses and individuals in the private sector, should run surpluses. This is diametrically wrong.

U.S. depressions tend to come on the heels of federal surpluses.

1804-1812: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 48%. Depression began 1807.
1817-1821: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 29%. Depression began 1819.
1823-1836: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 99%. Depression began 1837.
1852-1857: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 59%. Depression began 1857.
1867-1873: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 27%. Depression began 1873.
1880-1893: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 57%. Depression began 1893.
1920-1930: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 36%. Depression began 1929.
1997-2001: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 15%. Recession began 2001.

Federal surpluses take dollars out of the economy. By formula, removing dollars from an economy is recessionary.

VIII. Inflation

When the facts are explained, most people come to understand that the federal government does have the infinite ability to create dollars (incorrectly termed “printing” dollars.)

But then, doubters invariably fall back on the “Federal Spending (or Federal Deficits) Causes Inflation” idea bolstered by misleading photos of people lugging wheelbarrows filled with printed currency.

This belief comes from the false mantra, “Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods and services.” 

There is no doubt that inflations, and especially hyper-inflations, go hand-in-hand with ever-higher denominations of increasingly worthless paper currencies.

At one time, Italy printed a 500,000-lira note. But that did not cause inflation. It was the Italian government’s misguided reaction to inflation.

When you hear there is a shortage of “X” (which can be anything from oil to wood to computer chips to bananas), what do you expect to happen to the price of “X”?

You’re right. The price of “X” will rise. It’s an example of supply and demand.  When supply doesn’t meet demand, prices rise. So the real question concerning inflation is: Does federal money-creation cause demand to increase more than supply?

Adding dollars to the economy unquestionably increases both the demand and supply for some products and services. But for there to be inflation, overall demand would have to increase more than supply.

That is not what happens in the real world.

Here is a comparison of inflation vs. net federal spending (spending minus taxes), the net amount of money the federal government pumps into the economy.

The above graph demonstrates that, contrary to popular wisdom and contrary to what you have been told, net federal spending does not cause inflation. The red net-spending line does not correspond to the blue inflation line

So, what causes inflation?

The price of oil is closely related to supply and demand. When oil is scarce, its price rises.

The price of oil affects the prices of nearly every product or service because oil is universally used, not only for transportation, heating, and other energy needs (which most products and services need) but also as an ingredient in many products.

Here is a graph showing the relationship between oil scarcity and inflation:

Because oil is ubiquitous in our economy, a scarcity of oil causes an increase in virtually all other prices, aka inflation.

What causes oil scarcity? Is it federal spending? No, as the following graph demonstrates, net federal spending does not cause oil shortages. 

Oil scarcity is caused by many factors. OPEC and Russian production cuts are the single biggest drivers of rising oil prices. Thus, the warning that federal spending leads to inflation is widely believed and claimed by some media, economists, and politicians, but it is not supported by historical fact.

What cures inflation? Additional deficit spending to increase the supply of scarce items — especially oil and food — while also supporting research and developments of substitutes.

IX. What About Interest Rate Control?

Your information sources, economists, media, and politicians tell you that raising interest rates helps prevent/cure inflation. The Federal Reserve certainly believes this or claims to.

Part of the Fed’s logic is that interest rates strengthen the U.S. dollar by increasing the demand for dollars. When interest rates rise, more people want to make deposits into interest-paying T-security accounts. 

To do so, you need dollars. You can’t deposit any other currency. 

When the demand for dollars goes up,  the value of the dollar rises, and that “stronger” dollar can pay for more imports from nations whose currency is “weaker.” In short, raising interest rates lowers the dollar price of imports, which works against inflation.

Imports only account for approximately 14% of the economy (Gross Domestic Product). What happens to the other $86%?

Nearly all costs increase when interest rates go up. For instance, a 1% difference between a $200,000 home with a $160,000 mortgage increases your monthly payment by almost $100. Although the difference in monthly payment may not seem that extreme, the 1% higher rate means you’ll pay approximately $30,000 more in interest over the 30-year term.

But it gets worse. Interest affects the cost of building a house because material costs and transportation costs rise with interest rates. Interest also affects the cost of food, not only because of increased transportation costs but also farming costs.

Farmers generally borrow during planting season and pay their loans back when they sell their crops. Higher interest rates increase the cost of food, and of course, farm machinery prices increase.

In short, the Fed views inflation as a demand problem (people eat too much, buy too many cars and houses, and buy too much of what they don’t need).

In Fed language, the economy is “too hot” and needs “cooling.” Said another way, the economy is too healthy and needs to be recessed a little. That is why the Fed always fears its actions might cause a full-blown recession.

It’s a ridiculous proposition because the Fed raises interest rates to cure the “demand problem.”

The Fed tries to cure inflation by raising prices, which is identical to trying to cure anemia by applying leeches.

Inflation is, and always has been, a supply problem, most often caused by shortages of oil and/or food.

What is the cure for shortages? Not recession. The cure for shortages is federal spending to acquire and distribute the scarce items.

Rather than blaming people for buying too much and the federal government for spending too much, the Fed should do nothing about inflation. 

Congress and the President are responsible for shortages. Unfortunately, they have avoided responsibility by shifting the blame to the Fed and interest rates.

The current inflation was not caused by people buying too much or by too low interest rates.

The current inflation was caused by COVID-related shortages of oil, food, computer chips, lumber, steel, shipping, and many other products and services, along with a shortage of labor. 

Raising interest rates to cure those shortages is foolish. It exacerbates the problem. Instead, the government should have helped oil producers find, drill, and refine more oil, farmers grow more food, and manufacturers create and ship more of what we lacked.

In the long term, federal spending to increase the usage of oil substitutes will help prevent inflations.

SUMMARY

1. Money is not a physical thing. It is a number on balance sheets. You cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or feel a dollar.
2. Gold and silver are not, and never have been, money.
3. The U.S. government is Monetarily Sovereign. It cannot run short of its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar. It’s finances are nothing like the finances of state and local governments, businesses, euro governments, you, and me.
4. A dollar is a debt of the federal government, backed not by gold or any other physical thing but rather by the full faith and credit of the federal government.r
5. A dollar bill is not a dollar. It is a bearer title for a dollar, similar to a printed IOU.
6. The federal government has the infinite ability to create the laws that create dollars.
7. The federal government creates dollars by sending instructions (not dollars) to banks, instructing them to increase the balances in creditors’ checking accounts.
8. Federal taxes do not fund federal spending, but state/local taxes do fund state/local economies. Federal tax dollars are destroyed upon receipt at the Treasury. The purposes of federal taxes are to control the economy and assure demand for the dollar.
9. The federal government never borrows dollars. The purpose of T-bills, T-notes, and T-bonds is to provide a safe storage place for unused dollars.
10. Federal spending doesn’t cause inflation, and currency printing is a misguided response to, not a cause of, inflation.
11. All inflations have been caused by shortages of goods and services, usually oil and food. Federal spending cures shortages by obtaining and disseminating scarce goods and services.
12. Inflation is not caused by an economy being “too hot” or consumers buying “too much.” Raising interest rates increases prices, exacerbating inflation, and is recessionary. 

 

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

For those of a Libertarian bent who invariably opt against federal spending, the following article from the South Florida Sentinal outlines exactly what the federal government can, should, and has the unique ability to fund without concern about profitability.

Thousands of such experimental projects could be pursued if not for private sector concerns about future payout. The federal government needs no such concerns.

Progress is made via failure, which the federal government can tolerate, but the private sector cannot. 

No federal spending is wasteful because even the most far-fetched, failed projects still add growth dollars and jobs to the economy.

A bigger sibling for 3D printer

University demonstrates how recyclable affordable housing can be built quickly, cheaply

By David Sharp and Jennifer McDermott Associated Press

ORONO, Maine — The world’s largest 3D printer has created a house that can cut construction time and labor. An even larger printer unveiled this week may one day create entire neighborhoods.

The machine revealed Tuesday at the University of Maine is four times larger than the first one — commissioned less than five years ago — and capable of printing ever mightier objects. 

That includes scaling up its 3D-printed home technology using bio-based materials to eventually demonstrate how printed neighborhoods can offer an avenue to affordable housing to address homelessness in the region.

Thermoplastic polymers are extruded from a printer dubbed the “Factory of the Future 1.0,” said Habib Dagher, director of UMaine’s Advanced Structures & Composite Center, home to both large printers. 

It combines robotics operations with new sensors, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.

And there could be even larger printers after the University of Maine breaks ground this summer on a new building.

“We’re learning from this to design the next one,” he said.

Those attending the unveiling included representatives from the Departments of Defense, Energy, and HUD, as well as other stakeholders who plan to utilize the new technologies made available by the printer.

Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said the printer exceeded her expectations and “stands as a beacon of innovation.”

Shrouded by a black curtain, the printer was on and whirring behind the speakers. At the end, the curtain opened, revealing that it was working on a test project for a boat.

The unit can print objects 96 feet long by 32 feet wide by 18 feet high; its frame fills up the large building in which it’s housed.

It has a voracious appetite, consuming as much as 500 pounds of material an hour.

The original printer, christened in 2019, was certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest polymer 3D printer, the university said.

It was used to create a 600-square-foot, single-family house made of wood fiber and bio-resin materials that are recyclable. Dubbed BioHome3D, it showed an ability to quickly produce houses. 

To meet the growing demand for housing, Maine will need 80,000 more residences over the next six years, according to Maine Housing.

Dagher said there’s a shortage of affordable housing and workers to build homes. The university wants to show how homes can be constructed nearly entirely by a printer with a lower carbon footprint. 

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the buildings and construction sector accounts for 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions, largely due to the production and use of cement, steel, aluminum, and other materials with a significant carbon footprint.

Such printed buildings can be recycled. “You can basically deconstruct it, you can grind it up if you wish, the 3D-printed parts, and reprint with them, do it again,” Dagher said before the event.

The Army Corps of Engineers provided most of the funding for the new printer, which cost several million dollars, said Dannel Malloy, chancellor of the University of Maine System.

When politicians and others complain about expensive federal projects without obvious payouts, like going to the moon and Mars, they have no idea what their complaints cost America in terms of lost knowledge.

The federal government has unlimited money available (, and contrary to popular wisdom, federal debt is not a threat to, or burden on, anyone.

According to the mathematical formula (GDP = Federal + Nonfederal Spending + Net Exports), federal deficit spending is absolutely necessary for economic growth.

Even the infamous Gravina Island Bridge, commonly referred to as the “Bridge to Nowhere,” the ultimate in what is commonly called “pork barrel politics,” added dollars and jobs to the economy at no cost to any American taxpayer. (Federal taxes don’t fund federal spending.)

And of all federal spending, support for research and development may have the most short- and long-term value. We need much, much more of it.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

 

This article (except for the photos) appeared in the April 28, 2024, issue of the South Florida Sun Sentinal. It contains medical questions of vital interest to every woman and man.

If you want accurate answers to these medical questions, your first call should not be to your doctor. Your first call should be to your attorney.

If that sounds outrageous, you’ll have the opportunity to change it in November.

Or ladies, you can simply leave your body in the hands of the politicians.

Abortion law raising frantic questions
By Cindy Krischer Goodman, South Florida Sun Sentinel

On May 1, reproductive care in Florida will change. Anyone more than six weeks pregnant will be prohibited by law from getting an abortion.

 Obstetricians who work privately, or on a hospital staff, already are fielding questions from patients, while also trying to understand the effect on their practices.

A wrong call could lead to criminal charges — for a patient or a doctor.

There are exceptions to the new abortion law. A woman in Florida can get an abortion after six weeks if two physicians certify, in writing, that it is necessary to save her life or to prevent serious injury.

Also, abortions will be allowed through 15 weeks if the pregnancy is caused by rape or incest.

In those cases, the woman has to show documentation such as a medical record, restraining order or a police report.

For the last two years, abortion has been legal in Florida through 15 weeks. Florida lawmakers put that restriction into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, which had protected the right to have an abortion.

Before that, abortions were legal in Florida through 24 weeks.

In Florida, a waiting period is in effect, too. Anyone who wants an abortion has to wait 24 hours after an initial doctor’s visit before returning to undergo a procedure.

Over the next few months, the nuances of the new six-week ban will play out. Women who face complications during pregnancy will face new challenges. Here are some of the medical questions women are asking:

Q. How will six weeks be calculated?
A. Florida measures gestational age from the last menstrual period. So, for women who have consistency in their periods — every 28 days — it would be two weeks after a missed period. But as doctors point out, not every woman is consistent.

“A lot of women have cycle that vary from 21 to 35 days,” said Dr. Cecilia Grande, a Miami OB-GYN with FemWell Group Health. “Some will skip a month, and that’s just normal for them.”

OB-GYNs will do ultrasounds to help figure out how many weeks the gestational duration is in the pregnancy, and then try to confirm the results with the dating by last menstrual period. During the scan, a sonographer takes specific measurements of the pregnancy.

“Ultrasound dating is not exact,” Grande said.” You have no idea how difficult this will be for doctors to measure.”

Q. What are the early signs of pregnancy that might be noticeable in six weeks?
A. Lots of people in early pregnancy will have cramping and light vaginal bleeding, symptoms that might be confused with having a period. They also may have symptoms that include nausea, tender or swollen breasts, a late period, feeling tired, feeling bloated, frequent urination, and mood swings.

“However, especially very early on, you may be pregnant without experiencing any of these symptoms,” said Dr. Robyn Schickler, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida.

“Every pregnancy is different, too. Some do not have any symptoms at all in the first trimester and may have no idea they are pregnant until later in the pregnancy.

Some people have irregular periods and so they don’t miss a period,” she said.

Q. How many weeks into pregnancy do women test for abnormalities? And what will happen now if one is discovered?
A. “The first set of testing we can do is a blood test, which is a genetic test that happens around 10 weeks into pregnancy,” said Dr. Chelsea Daniels, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health and an abortion provider in South Florida. “That screens for the most common chromosomal abnormalities. A scan for anatomical abnormalities happen at 18-22 weeks.”

If there is an abnormality, the law says the only exception to the six-week ban is if it’s “fatal fetal abnormality,” or if an abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life.

Q. What happens when a woman miscarries? Can a health professional still perform a D&C?
A. Dilation and curettage (D&C) is a surgical procedure to remove tissue from inside the uterus after a miscarriage or abortion. Health care professionals perform D&Cs to prevent infection or heavy bleeding.

Dr. Shavonne Ramsey Coleman, a South Florida obstetrician with the Ob Hospitalist Group, said if the woman has miscarried, a D&C is legal even with the six-week ban. “If the fetus is deceased, then there’s nothing viable.”

Q. What happens if a sonogram reveals a fetus no longer has a heartbeat or has a condition from which it will die before birth?
A. In 2022, there were 1,523 stillbirths in Florida, fetuses that no longer had a heartbeat after 20 weeks’ gestation. Even with the change in law, a doctor can still induce a women to deliver immediately if the baby no longer is alive.

However, if the fetus is alive and two physicians have certified in writing that in reasonable medical judgment, the fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality, the pregnancy may be terminated.

There’s a caveat though. The bill that created the six-week ban includes language requiring that the pregnancy must not have “progressed to the third trimester,” which could be interpreted to mean that abortions for fatal fetal abnormalities are banned after 27 weeks.

A full-term birth is 40 weeks.

Q. What are provider concerns and how does the six-week ban change physician-patient interaction?
A. “The biggest concern from a provider’s perspective is caring for a patient and being criminalized, or having to share private medical data with law enforcement,” said Dr. Ramsey Coleman, who belongs to a national network of obstetricians that work exclusively in hospitals.

“That’s some of the the challenges that colleagues have experienced in Texas that we are concerned about in Florida.”

Another concern, she said, is that pregnant women who arrive at a hospital won’t be forthcoming with doctors. “We are concerned we won’t get a true history because the patient doesn’t to want to tell us the real story of what happened to them and why they’re in their situation. So it makes caring for patients harder.

You’re trying to piece together a story to figure out how to take care of a patient. And in the meantime, they can decompensate and really take a bad turn.

So I think those are some of the challenges that we are already experiencing and fear we will be experiencing even more.”

Dr. Grande, the Miami OB-GYN, says she will be having more conversations with patients about birth control, something she has been doing after the 15-week ban took effect.

“I am spending more time describing all the forms of contraception and informing patients about changes in the abortion law,” she said. “I tell them if the condom breaks, you need to know about emergency contraception”

Q. What might need to change with the six-week ban when it comes to birth control?
A. “I probably see at least a handful of patients or more per clinic day that become pregnant while on birth control,” said Dr. Schickler with Planned Parenthood.

“Though we have very effective forms of birth control, not everything is 100%. In addition, these very effective forms of birth control can be completely inaccessible for many patients due to high cost.”

The effectiveness can depend on the type of birth control a person is using, she said.

“Risk of pregnancy is higher if a patient misses pills, or if a condom breaks,” she said “We see patients on all sorts of birth control that may become pregnant, simply because nothing is 100%.”

Doctors say they will be more proactive in suggesting patients take emergency contraception if they have had unprotected sex.

Often called the morning-after pill, emergency contraceptive pills are available over the counter and can be taken up to five days after having unprotected sex.

With the six-week ban forcing women to be more aware, Schickler advises: “Track your menstrual cycle (to the best of your ability) and take a pregnancy test immediately after you miss a period.

For patients who have irregular periods, consider taking a pregnancy test once a month to be safe.”

Q. What are the gray areas in obstetric care that may emerge after May 1?
A. It will be up to doctors to interpret the new law, and that can lead to denied care, Schickler said.

“These laws tie our hands and put us in a position where we can’t just look at providing care from a medical perspective; now we have to consider it legally as well,” she explained.

What happens when a membrane ruptures and there is bleeding, or when a pregnant woman leaks amniotic fluid, asks Grande, the Miami obstetrician.

“We previously would have sped up the natural process to force a delivery of the baby to avoid sepsis (infection) for the mother,” she said.

“Now the new law will lead to a delay of care. The doctor will wait to intervene until the situation is life-threatening.”

Daniels says another gray area like will be around the definition of a birth defect that would be fatal to a fetus and therefore qualify as an exception to the abortion law.

“That’s very difficult to medically interpret,” she said. “Does it mean that a pregnancy after birth couldn’t survive for an hour, two hours, 24 hours?

It’s very difficult to define. … doctors will be forced to make challenging decisions in the best interest of their patients, but on an unstable foundation.”

Q. What is the law regarding medication abortion in Florida?
A. Medication abortions are the most popular form and typically use a combination or two drugs to end a pregnancy.

Florida law requires anyone who obtains a medication abortion to take the first pill in person with a healthcare provider.

The FDA has approved the two-drug regimen for pregnancies up to 10 weeks.

But it’s possible after May 1, Florida women will turn to the internet to order abortion pills, either illegally or through telemedicine appointments with out-of-state doctors, who can prescribe them due to “shield laws” that protect the medical providers from out-of-state prosecution.

The pills are widely considered safe to use up to about 10 weeks.

Florida clinics can still offer follow-up exams to those who obtained the abortion pills online, but they would have to direct a woman out of state if there still is fetal cardiac activity and gestation is greater than six weeks.

“Medication abortions are safe and extremely effective, especially in early pregnancy,” Daniels notes. “If someone were to need to go to a clinic, it would be rare.”

Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com.

Women: Again, if you feel you need, or even might need, an abortion, until the November elections, your body will be in the hands of the politicians.

In November, you, with he help of your doctor, will have the opportunity to take control over your body, that is, if you want it. 

Or, you can just leave it to the Republican politicians to decide what is best for you.

Good luck with that.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Look at this graph of our dropping fertility rate. We Americans are dying faster than replacements can be born.

You might be surprised to learn that Americans believe immigration is one of the most important issues facing the nation.

But, it’s not too little immigration that is of concern; it’s too much immigration.

One would think we would understand that the nation’s economy needs more workers, not fewer.

After all, we see repeated articles falsely claiming Social Security and Medicare are running into crises because fewer young working people are supporting more older, retired people who collect Social Security.

And these older people tend to collect more Medicare, too.

Although the notion that workers’ FICA payments fund SS and Medicare is wrong, it’s commonly believed, so why the common antipathy to immigration?

Some would say that immigrants take jobs from citizens, but clearly that is not the case.

If it were, we wouldn’t worry about SS and Medicare losing funding because we lack FICA payments.

Undocumented mmigrants pay FICA, and the more young immigrants (the vast majority are young), the more FICA is collected.

Further, being young, they use less Social Security and less Medicare than the average American.

It’s not the lack of documentation that bothers Americans.

Much of the problem is the vast misinformation being spread by the right-wing “news” media.

They claim immigrants are criminals, rapists, murderers, lazy, non-working takers, etc. — i.e. generally lawless people whose very presence ruins neighborhoods.

None of it is true.

Statistically, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

And they surely are not lazy. They take the meanest, toughest jobs native-born Americans refuse.

Immigrants are less prone to committing crimes than are U.S. citizens, and they do pay taxes.

They take back-breaking jobs U.S. citizens don’t want, and their buying increases consumer demand, which in turn increases the number of available jobs in America, lowering our unemployment rate.

So why are they despised by some, especially by Republicans?

Like all dictators, Donald Trump needs scapegoats. Hitler had Jews. Trump has immigrants.

He has made the fear and loathing of immigrant families a fundamental part of the MAGA movement.

There even are Republicans who wish to unconstitutionally eliminate birthright citizenship and to deport “Dreamers,” children whose only crime was to have been brought to America undocumented.

Dreamers are the good young people America needs. Many know no other country than America and no language other than English.

But Trump has parlayed lies and fear into a distinctly unAmerican bigoted mass hatred of brown-skinned people.

To solve the self-made “crisis,” we must acknowledge several things.

1. 1. Immigrants are people. They are men, women, and children desperate for a better life. They have made an often dangerous, often fatal, journey, willing to work for America just to flee the crime, corruption, and hatred in their native lands.
      In this way, they resemble our own ancestors, who came here to escape the poverty and bigotry of Europe and Asia and contributed to building America.
   2. The difference is that our ancestors were welcomed across the border, while today, we try to close the border. It’s not as though America is too crowded for them. We have plenty of room.
      It’s because we have forgotten our roots and now have adopted an “I’ve not mine; to hell with you,” unAmerican attitude stirred up by a hate-mongering, Hitlerian psychopath.
   3. Immigrants risk the dangers of illegal immigration simply because we have made legal immigration so difficult. We spend money on walls and guards rather than spending the same money on prompt and legal hearings to admit the good people and reject only the bad.
      The poem inscribed on the statue of Liberty has been turned into a sad joke.

America’s new reaction to things we don’t like or understand seems to veer toward cruelty and punishment rather than humane solutions.

We prefer to lock up juvenile criminals (and then, when they are released, give them guns) rather than curing the poverty that instigates crime.

Reduce poverty (which the right-wing invariably rejects as “coddling the lazy”), and crime is greatly reduced.

Similarly, we prefer to deport, then deport again, and then again, rather than make the immigration process easier for the good people and difficult only for the bad minority.

Today, most lawful means of entering the country take years because of overwhelmed immigration agencies, rising levels of global migration and a limit on the number of certain visas, all of which have culminated in a massive backlog of people trying to get to the U.S.

• • Around 9 million people are awaiting green cards, and those wait times have skyrocketed from just a few months to years, possibly decades, according to the Cato Institute and other researchers.
  • In 1991, only 3% of preference immigrants, or those seeking visas through family members already in the U.S., had to wait more than 10 years. By 2018, 27% of applicants experienced that wait time.

None of this is necessary or beneficial. America has the resources to create a fast, accurate system for importing valuable working families to build America.

America needs more good people, yet we reject thousands every year. It’s self-harming, verging on suicide.

We can blame immigrants. We can blame Trump. But the fault is ours for following his crazed lead and for not understanding our own history and growth.

There are lessons aplenty. Look at WWII Germany and Italy. Look at Russia. Look at North Korea. They followed fear-peddling, hate-mongering, bigoted leaders down to hell.

Can you understand the irony of an anti-immigration program claiming it will “make America great again” when it was immigrants who made America great?

“Build the wall,” is not a call for greatness. It is a siren call of ignorance.

Learn.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

……………………………………………………………………..

The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY