The medical community is not doing enough to promote the killing of unborn babies in abortions.
So says Carole Joffe, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.
In a column at the Washington Post, Joffe argued that abortion needs to be treated as “mainstream” medicine.
“Failing to embed abortion care in mainstream medicine made it politically vulnerable,” she wrote, anticipating that the U.S. Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade this year.
In 1973, Roe made America extreme on abortion. The United States is one of only seven countries in the world that allows abortions without restriction up to birth, and states are prohibited from protecting unborn babies from abortion before viability.
But abortion activists mislead the public into thinking U.S. abortion laws are not good enough, and any restriction on abortion is unnecessary and harmful.
In her column, Joffe argued as much, claiming that without easy, unrestricted access to abortion on demand, some women will buy abortion drugs online or try to do abortions themselves. Others will “be forced into a pregnancy that will result in a child they are unable to care for. It is painful to imagine how different these scenarios might be had the medical establishment acted more forcefully at the time of Roe,” she wrote.
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Even though Joffe basically admitted that abortion is common, estimating one in four women has an abortion in her lifetime, and more than 63 million unborn babies have been aborted since 1973, including about 1 million annually, she implied that those numbers are not high enough.
To her, it is a problem that most OB-GYNs and general practitioners still do not provide or promote abortions to their patients after nearly 50 years of legalized abortion on demand. She said 95 percent of abortions are done in “isolated” abortion facilities, not hospitals or doctors’ offices, and there still is a “stigma” about it in the medical community.
Joffe continued:
One third-generation OB/GYN told me, “In my family, the worst thing that could be said about anybody was that he was an abortionist.” His relatives did not object morally to abortion, but rather they held the assumption that illegal abortion doctors were “losers.” Even after Roe, a physician who supported freedom of choice, commenting on the small number of doctors doing abortions in New York City, remarked: “The rest of the staff regards these doctors with esteem not markedly higher than that previously reserved for the back street abortionist.”
Joffe blamed major medical organizations and medical schools for not doing more to promote the killing of unborn babies in abortions over the past five decades, writing, “In short, at a crucial time, medical leaders passed on the opportunity to fully integrate abortion care into mainstream medicine.”
She called for “mandated” abortion training in medical schools and criticized U.S. Congress for protecting pro-life medical workers’ conscience rights. Joffe also urged medical groups to do more to “educate” politicians and the general public about the “health benefits of legal abortion.”
Joffe said she does feel encouraged to see more young women becoming abortionists today and more medical schools requiring abortion training. But that still is not good enough. She wants the killing of unborn babies in abortions to be viewed as normal, both among medical professionals and society as a whole.
That never will happen. Doctors and nurses know better than most people that unborn babies are unique, living human beings – second patients in every pregnancy – and abortions violently and unnecessarily kill them.
Last year, medical groups representing tens of thousands of medical professionals urged the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, saying abortion is a debasement of medicine.
“As physicians and other healthcare professionals, we know that when we care for pregnant women, we are caring for two distinct patients,” the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine wrote in an amicus brief.
Abortions are not health care; more than 90 percent of OB-GYNs do not even do them, according to the alliance. Abortions also harm mothers, subjecting them to increased risks of future preterm births, infertility, mental health disorders, even death, the alliance continued. In the second trimester, the risks are even greater.
“It is time for those of us in the medical profession to boldly defend the lives of all of our patients and demand that our preborn patients be protected and our pregnant patients be empowered instead of lied to,” the alliance said.
And despite all the lies and misinformation from abortion activists, Americans’ opinions on the matter have not changed much in the past 50 years. Polls consistently show that a strong majority of Americans oppose abortion on demand and support significant restrictions on abortion.
