It is argued that a woman has a right to rid herself of a preborn infant who has invaded her body and trespassed on her person. Many people are militantly promoting choice. Patients must choose. They couldn’t be prevented from choosing. Everybody makes choices. But a physician’s duty is to clearly present the options, encourage wise choices and not enact the desires of bad choices. That’s the way I must practice. Following assessment and diagnosis, I recommend a procedure; I carefully inform them of what it entails, the benefits, the side effects, the alternatives and wait until they choose. The caveats in my practice of course are:
- The patient must be fully informed of why the procedure is necessary, the possible benefits, and the known and reported side effects. (This is almost never done with respect to abortion.)
- I also insist that my patient’s choice cannot infringe or prohibit the choices of other people. I also point out that there must be mutual benefit.
- I also approve of society constraining the behaviour of any individual if it infringes on the welfare and benefit of others.
- I also insist that people cannot force their choice on others.
- I will not be forced to perform any medical procedure that isn’t necessary, beneficial and with relatively few side effects.
Almost universally, physicians practice “evidence-based medicine.” Any procedure that a physician performs, supports or refers a patient to must be:
1) Necessary
Abortion is almost never necessary for any medical illness. You watch, if a woman really wants a baby, the physicians will do their utmost to preserve her health and the life of the baby. Apart from ectopic pregnancies, surgery is almost never necessary. Women can be operated on during a pregnancy almost as well as when they are not pregnant. There will come a time in the near future, I suspect, when the baby implanted in the fallopian tube will be cut out and re-implanted in the uterus.
There are no psychiatric indications for abortion. Every psychiatric illness we know is a contra-indication for abortion; depression, psychoses, suicide in particular are made worse by abortions. This has been known and written in standard texts for at least 20 years, but it has been disregarded for convenience.
2) Beneficial
There is no evidence that abortion benefits a woman in any regard. All studies that purport to show improvement in health or welfare are very badly flawed. Brenda Major, attempting to show benefit, had only a 40% follow-up. She measured the individuals’ psychological state in the abortion clinic just before the abortion, then sometime later and found they expressed relief. Would you be surprised that when somebody is under enormous pressure from outside and from her own ambivalence, she is extremely anxious just before the abortion, then afterward has a sense of relief, at least in the majority of those she followed up. Majority of those who were not followed up obviously don’t want to come back.
3) Few Side Effects
A physician, if he cannot do any good, must first do no harm. Primum non nocere. There are an increasing number of studies that show very harmful effects, psychological, physical and social, to a woman following an abortion. In one study we did, we found 80% of the relationships break up following an abortion. In a study of 186,000 Medicaid recipients in California, we found increasingly high rates of death by strokes, heart attacks, homicides, AIDS, accidents, and suicide in those women who had had an abortion compared with those who had a live birth. (See Table 2) In a study aided by the College of Family Physicians in Victoria, we found that all types of pregnancy loss adversely affected a woman’s general health. Abortion was far more damaging than any other kind of pregnancy loss.
We found that men are adversely affected by abortion, because the law recognizes that they have no right to restrain their partner from aborting their baby. Men feel helpless and angry, and tend to abdicate their responsibilities regarding the preborn baby and his/her mother.
Can you think of any situation where you can benefit at the expense of another? I don’t think there are any exceptions, regardless of colour, creed or size. If it’s not good for your neighbour, it’s not god for you. If it’s not good for man, it’s not good for woman, if it’s not good for black, it’s not good for white. If it’s not good for the preborn baby, it’s not good for his/her father, mother or siblings. I believe we have been able to demonstrate that is philosophically and scientifically true.
Conclusions
When science and logic are applied to the consideration of abortion and child abuse, the assertions of polemics and rhetoric fade away. We find, in fact, that morality and science agree.
A child’s first right is not to be wanted, but to be. We must recognize and defend that right, and welcome every child. Jesus Christ said, “if you welcome a child in my name, you welcome me, and if you welcome me, you welcome my Father.” And when you welcome God of the universe, you welcome all the resources of the universe.
The current practice of abortion is a medical aberration. It is not controlled or practiced like every other area of medicine. We must recognize we cannot benefit at the expense of another. We must always work toward mutual benefit, and then individuals and societies may progress.
Truth is seldom accepted in its time. People are more likely to shoot the messenger than they are to listen to the message. We should always remember that we should always listen most carefully to al those things that irritate us most.
There are a series of at least ten alternatives to abortion that I would like you to consider.
See article “Ten Live Options to Abortion” on messengers2.com. |
