Stop Drive-Through Mastectomies

Clink the above title and you'll be able to sign a petition about the following bill being pushed through Capitol Hill:

Lifetime Television continues to deliver millions of your petition signatures to Capitol Hill, urging Congress to ban "drive-through" mastectomies — the practice in which women are forced out of the hospital sometimes only hours after breast cancer surgery. Sign our petition now to help end drive-through mastectomies once and for all. More than 10 million of you have signed the petition so far!

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) will re-introduce in Congress in 2005 bi-partisan legislation to end this horrific practice. This petition drive by Lifetimetv.com is a partnership with physicians, advocates and survivors across the nation.

Lifetime Television, Rep. DeLauro and Connecticut physician Kristen Zarfos, M.D., have been fighting for this type of access to quality care for all women since 1996. The legislation would require insurance companies to cover a 48-hour minimum stay for mastectomy patients and a 24-hour stay for a woman undergoing a lymph node dissection. The legislation ensures that a doctor and a patient will make a decision together about staying at a hospital after a mastectomy.

While both the American College of Surgeons and the American Medical Association believe that most patients require a longer hospital stay, "drive-through" mastectomies have become an unwelcome reality for women who are battling breast cancer. Against the advice of their doctors, women must leave the hospital while still in pain, groggy with anesthesia and with drainage tubes still in place.

Rep. DeLauro and Sen. Landrieu are asking both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate to join with them to ban drive-through mastectomies. The legislation is supported by the American Medical Association; American College of Surgeons; American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons; Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses; National Council of Jewish Women; Society for the Advancement of Women's Health Research; Susan G. Komen Foundation; Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization; and Families USA.

If you agree that women require more than one night at a hospital after undergoing a mastectomy, here's your chance to make your voice heard. With the strength of these petition numbers behind us, we will get this legislation passed.