With the number who perform surgical abortions steadily declining, pro-abortionists have turned to chemical abortions (which are steadily rising) and trying (as they have for years) to force medical institutions to include training in abortion. An example of case for the latter is a story headlined “Abortion Care Is Healthcare and Must Be Included in Medical Curricula” by Audrey Mannuel, Maya Patel and Caroline Beshers who are second year medical students.
They offer two primary reasons why abortion training should be integrated into the curricula. First (what else?) to address all the “misinformation” floating around—“misinformation that can discourage patients from seeking care.” In other words there is no room for a woman to hear the truth about abortion—its complications, physical and psychological.
Second, “Educating health professionals on abortion care is a powerful method of preventing the politicization of medical care such as abortion access.” Put another way, if physicians-in the-making are immersed in performing abortion, they are less likely to protest at taking unborn life.
However, they write, “Abortion education is severely under-emphasized in medical curricula. By failing to educate medical students on abortion, the medical institution effectively contributes to the continued politicization, restriction and stigmatization of abortion care in the U.S.”
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They cite a national survey of medical school programs from back in 2005! It “revealed that 23 percent offered no formal education on abortion. Of those that did offer education, 32 percent only had one abortion-related lecture during the clinical years.”
What about individual ob-gyns? A 2019 survey of U.S. obstetricians and gynecologists that appeared in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology found that “fewer than 1 in 4 were willing and able to perform one themselves.”
They analogize prescribing opioid to abortion. “By discussing opioids objectively instead of morally, we replace fear of potential controversy with a sense of duty to our patients .” Likewise “ignoring the reality that we will have patients who seek abortion care contributes to its controversiality.” Do I have to spell out the difference between properly describing an opioid and taking the life of a defense unborn child?
I like the answer Dr. Donna Harrison, executive director of the Assn. of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, once gave to a Los Angeles Times reporter. “As physicians, we’ve taken the Hippocratic oath,” which commits physicians to ‘do no harm’ to their patients, she said. “So we don’t kill our patients.”
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
