Without saying that you are making excuses for you husband, I just want it understood that your husband's demands in this matter are truly outrageous and a form of bullying. Even if he is genuinely stressed out by the level of your debt, demanding payment from the weaklings in his orbit for debt unrelated to your education is unkind and insulting to you. This does not bode well for how he will react to future professional and personal stressors. He needs to get a grip on the extent to which he is allowed to inflict his misery on the people around him.

I once dated a surgical resident and nothing annoyed me more than hearing him whine about being paid minimum wage. Dear LW and sympathetic friends: minimum wage applies to HOURLY and NON-EXEMPT salaried workers. The entire concept is misapplied when you start using it in conjunction with doctors and other professionals. Many professionals go through periods of their lives when they work for "minimum wage." Indeed, most small business owners work for minimum wage for a lot of the time if you included every hour they put into the enterprise. In that respect, doctors are actually exceedingly fortunate that their low wage sojourns are well-bounded by their training years.

Wealthy people are not ipso facto money obsessed assholes. Many are quite aware of how fortunate they have been in life and quite generous. I can only think of my husband's very well-off parents, and note that they have never, ever mentioned the fact that their wealth outstrips my parents' by many times. I am actually astonished at the degree to which LW's husband is so focused on her parents' wealth. LW needs to assess her husband's punitive and demeaning actions towards her family for what they are and decide whether this is the kind of person she wants to live with for the rest of her life.

These might not be the best facts, but make no mistake, using the availability of other doctors as an excuse for why these doctors did no wrong is seriously misguided. If the court had reached the opposite result, those who want to cram morals-based medical care down the throats of the rest of us would have no difficulty taking the decision and using it to pressure hospitals and other care providers not to provide select health care services to gays and unmarried women, and to punish non-conforming providers. This is indeed what has happened with abortion and why it's impossible for many doctors and hospitals to provide abortion services. The fact that this virus is spreading to the provision of contraception and fertility services should trouble all of us, and I am extremely grateful that the California Supreme Court finally recognized that access to health care services is important, and that practicing a profession requires some commitment to honoring that ideal.

I don't know the answer. I think it's extremely important to focus on a point mentioned earlier, and that is, the CA law doesn't require health care providers to provide a specific service. For instance, if these doctors want to provide services in conformance with Catholic dogma, the CA law does not require them to prescribe contraception. The CA law prohibits them from picking and choosing who will receive the services that they advertise and do actually provide. I confess to not knowing the exact language of the federal bill and don't have time to look it up. However, most of these bills focus on the "what" not the "who" that is being served. I don't like the bill for a whole host of reasons, but I don't think it would necessarily preempt this decision.

It's time to put every scrap of energy into enacting universal health coverage that transcends who you know and who you love. This is a waste of time and a side show to the real issue.

I can't tell anymore, both because the Salon writers seem to lack a robust satire gene and because I know parents who really do have kids like this, and it's rarely funny to deal with.

In any event, I stopped reading at the Hoisin sauce episode. If that really happened, then I have no idea whether your kid is a dick because it's impossible to know when he has an idiot for a parent. I have three kids and at the first sign of "running" through any contained public space like a restaurant at the age of two (or even older), they would have been in my arms immediately and we would have left if necessary.

He's not fodder for your writing career. Stop musing about his flaws and start parenting to help him control his behavior.

My initial reaction to Cary's advice was "You've got to be kidding!" But upon further reflection, it seems like LW could take a few small steps to help that wouldn't cause his world to come crashing down. Certainly, there's nothing wrong with just calling his mother to see if she is all right and to figure out whether he should call elder services (if she's that old), and to get her side of the story. He could then call a lawyer to understand how hopeless it would be (as I am fairly sure it would be) to try to unravel a legally binding arrangement entered into by a competent adult.

But as the child of a toxic parent, I am a big believer in maintaining the requisite distance necessary to preserve your mental health. Like it or not, parents reap what they sow. It sounds like LW already gave his childhood to the enterprise of his parents' narcissism. He should not be made to feel guilty for not wanting to give up his adulthood as well.