Abortion advocates are making a push to force pro-life doctors and medical professionals to partake in abortions against their own consciences. While pro-abortion groups, such as the Florida Interfaith Coalition for Reproductive Health and Justice, claim a woman’s so-called right to abortion is based on her own “personal values,” they fail to see the hypocrisy in their unwillingness to support medical professionals who don’t want to participate in abortion based on their own “personal values.”
According to data compiled by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, 46 states allow some health care providers to opt out of committing abortions. This includes 44 states that allow entire health care institutions to refuse to commit abortions. Along with federal laws, including the 1973 Church Amendments that prevent hospitals from discriminating against conscientious objectors, most medical professionals are currently able to practice medicine based on their own moral and religious beliefs — including the belief that abortion is not health care.
Whittling away at conscience protections
One study suggests that about 85% of OB/GYNs do not commit abortions, while the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found that about 83% of OB/GYNs in private practice don’t commit abortions. In addition, the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that fewer than one in four OBGYNs are willing to commit abortions. The fact that doctors won’t participate in abortion shines a very negative light on the abortion industry’s claim that it is basic health care. This profitable industry wants to put an end to that by outlawing conscientious objection rights for medical professionals, and increasing abortion training in medical schools.
Recently, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice dropped a case against the University of Vermont Medical Center, which had allegedly forced multiple medical professionals to participate in abortions. At least 10 nurses were reportedly forced to partake in about 20 abortions against their will. One nurse was so traumatized after she was tricked into entering the operating room (OR) under false pretenses — and then threatened with job loss if she didn’t stay — that she quit her job and her career as an OR nurse. The hospital denied any wrongdoing.
In February of this year, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a law that removed conscience protections for pro-life medical workers in the state. There is concern that quality doctors will leave New Mexico over that new law, worsening the state’s already existing doctor shortage.
In 2019, after the Trump administration expanded conscience protections for medical workers, the nation’s largest abortion business, Planned Parenthood, spoke out against such protections. “In allowing doctors, nurses, and even receptionists to deny care to patients, the Trump-Pence administration is providing legal cover for discrimination,” said then-president Leana Wen. In other words, her argument is that it is discriminatory to refuse participation in an elective procedure to kill a preborn child, but forcing doctors to kill preborn children is not discriminatory. Incidentally, many medical professionals have stated that abortion is never medically necessary.
When the abortion industry gains influence and control over future doctors
The push to force medical professionals to participate in abortions has begun to infiltrate medical schools, where the abortion industry hopes to train all doctors to view abortion as health care. Austin Clark was a fourth-year medical student at the University of Louisville School of Medicine set to graduate in May 2021. But the school dismissed him in July 2020, following his participation in the school’s pro-life group. Clark filed a lawsuit against the school for discriminating against him for his pro-life beliefs.
As it turns out, The University of Louisville School of Medicine is facing calls for an investigation, according to Students for Life of America, for its connection to local abortion business EMW Women’s Surgical Center. Dr. Ernest Marshall owns the facility, and has been a professor at the university medical school for 40 years. The college speaks openly about training medical students to commit abortions through the Ryan Residency, a program set up “to provide formal training in contraception, family planning and medical/surgical pregnancy termination.” It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see that pro-life students would be met with some hostility.
This “turn all doctors into abortionists” mentality is not just happening in the U.S. The same battle is being waged in Canada as abortion enthusiasts complain that a doctor’s refusal to commit abortions violates a woman’s human rights. Pro-abortion writer Tracey Lindeman wrote, “What’s clear is that conscientious objection, in Canada and elsewhere, isn’t purely a question of religious or moral convictions. Instead… it is wrapped up in doctor ego and discrimination in medicine. Barriers to adequate medical care have serious, documented health consequences. Yet, we can’t seem to shake the idea that doctors’ conscience rights and patients’ human rights are equal and can be balanced…”
Lindeman argued that a doctor giving a patient contact information for an abortion facility equated to a refusal to provide care. She referred to this as an act of “shaming” the woman, and attempting to change her mind by telling her to think about her decision and talk it over with her family.
It’s clear that what the abortion lobby wants is for every country to accept abortion as being of equal status with all actual health care procedures, and for every health care worker to participate as if these procedures are a routine part of health care. But genuine health care never intentionally takes a human life.
Is there really a medical reason to deliberately destroy a human life in the womb?
Even in the direst medical cases in which a mother’s life is truly at risk during pregnancy, abortion is never necessary. The Dublin Declaration, signed by more than 1,000 healthcare providers, attests that abortion is never medically necessary. Dr. Kendra Kolb explained why in a video for Live Action (above), stating, “What women deserve to know… even in the most high risk pregnancies, there is no medical reason why the life of the child must be directly and intentionally ended with an abortion procedure.” She continued:
In situations where the mothers’ life is truly in jeopardy, her pregnancy must end, and the baby must be delivered. These situations occur in cases of mothers who develop dangerously high blood pressure, have decompensating heart disease, life-threatening diabetes, cancer, or a number of other very serious medical conditions.
Some babies do need to be delivered before they are able to survive outside of the womb, which occurs around 22 to 24 weeks of life. These situations are considered a preterm delivery and not an abortion.
During an emergency preterm delivery, the child is delivered alive, and receives support and medical assistance to either help her survive or keep her comfortable if she is too young to survive. An abortion, however, would involve an intent to kill the child. Instead of an emergency delivery, which takes minutes, an abortion later in pregnancy can take days, further putting the mother’s life at risk. It makes little sense from a medical standpoint. Doctors know this and that’s why the majority of doctors won’t participate.
Additionally, abortion has lasting detrimental effects on women, as well as the medical professionals who participate. Abortion workers discuss nightmares and breakdowns — and those are medical professionals who freely chose that line of work.
Pro-life doctors are being villainized as anti-woman, but these doctors are fully aware that abortion is unnecessary, and that it intentionally ends the lives of human beings. This has never been about being “pro-choice;” otherwise, the abortion industry would accept that doctors should have a choice. This is about making abortion available everywhere, even in places where access to actual, lifesaving health care is sparse.
Editor’s Note 8/18/21: This article was updated with more information regarding the number of OBGYNs who are willing to commit abortions.
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