Why is it that the medical community has never accepted abortion as a respectable part of mainstream medicine?

Question

Is it because of the Hippocratic Oath "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art"?

Answer 1

Because it's so controversial as a to what is defined as life.

Selective reduction kills by a shot of potassium Chloride to the heart of the fetus.  Partial birth kills by jamming a pair of scissors into the skull, sucking its brains out and collapsing the head.  Why not wait until the baby is born and shoot it in the head, it would be even easier, and pretty much the same principle, IMO.

There's nothing respectable about it, ending an innocent life.

They can kill bacteria and viruses, but that form of life isn't a developing human being.

That being said, threatening doctors who do abortions isn't right either.  If women are going to get an abortion, I'd rather them have access to a clinic and not in an alley somewhere where they'll get septicemia.  At least one person would get out alive.

Answer 2

Because they have dedicated their lives to saving lives not taking lives.

Answer 3

I think that the medical community has accepted it and that it is people who have not accepted the woman's right to choose.

Answer 4

Because it's the same a murder. You're sucking the brains out of an innocent child, how is that ever the right thing to do?

Answer 5

When women were the doctors and healers of society, midwives provided that service on request, but with council.

When men began to supplant women - they called it medicine, not healing, abortion was left to the women as was birthing.

When the men of medicine and men of the Church got together,

it really became a matter of "Professional Standing", and women had none, therefore men became the final authority.

And the argument continues still - Does a woman own her body? Or does her father? Or her husband? or the Church, or the State? or the Medical Profession?

Ask yourself this question - Do men and women get the same kind (meaning quality) of medical treatment?

Think again.

Answer 6

That's not so.  The medical community certainly accepts abortion as a part of mainstream medicine.  The (wonderful) ob/gyn who delivered my now-17-year-old daughter also did abortions as part of her practice, and suffered with anti-abortion wingnuts picketing her home and threatening to kill her and her children.   As a doctor, she was obligated by her oath to provide this needed medical service at the risk of her own life and that of her family members.

Answer 7

Primum non nocere.  First, do no harm.  Many medical practitioners make the same distinction as some state laws: if an abortion is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother -- Oh, wait a minute!  If the fetus is not a human but just a clump of cells, then the host is not a "mother". -- it will be performed.  If it is not necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother, then it is elective surgery similar to nose jobs and p***s enhancement.  Weighing the risk of any such surgery against the questionable benefit, some doctors say that performing the operation would be doing harm.

Of course, some doctors perform elective surgery, for whatever reason; and doctors disagree as to what is necessary to protect the "health" of the pregnant woman.  For that matter, some plastic surgeons would argue that the mental health of a patient may be seriously at risk if she doesn't get her nose job.

Since morals, emotions, and large amounts of money are involved, the medical profession as a whole has difficulty taking a unified position on these issues.

ladyren's last paragraph is truly frightening.  She implies that human life is now expendable because too many babies live to adulthood in a world of insufficient resources.  On the other hand, all civilized political systems (as opposed to Naziism and Communism) are based on the sanctity of human life, at least beginning at birth.  Is she going to decide which lives are expendable?  I certainly would not want her for a doctor, if she thinks that some lives are worth more than others because there are more resources to sustain them.  The solution must be education (including education about birth control) and the better distribution of resources, not abortion as a substitute for birth control, or acceptance of death by negligence.

Answer 8

It has.  

Abortion docs are all over everywhere.  In my next life, I'd be one.  We know that if a woman truly wants an abortion, she will get it, and risk her life on the table in some basement .  Abortions ought forever to be legal.... just rare.

The Hippocratic oath was made during a time when every kid counted---ancient Greece.. Half of all children died before age 1, even up to the 1850's. and many women died in child birth.  

The population of the planet was small.  Now, it costs a fortune to raise a kid, and all  who get born usually survive.  

It is the main reason for the political instability of Africa... women there have always had 13 pregnancies... just as women did in Europe for  millennia. ...in fact, since the dawn of humanity..... All women historically have had, on average 13 pregnancies in her life.    

The difference now is that they all live.  Even in Africa, 13 pregnancies,  9 live births, 5 make it to age 1 and those that survive past a year, usually make it at least to 20 or 30.  But there is not enough food to feed everyone, so they starve, and in the process civil wars erupt over water, and food.

The Hippocratic oath, is outdated.  That part of it isn't compatible with what our planet needs... but the first line will always be compatible

Answer 9

Lots of physicians have no problem performing an abortion.  It is a personal decision.  I happen to believe that it is taking a human life, and to me that is unacceptable. "Do no harm" can apply to infants, too.

One of Obama's advisors has proposed that it is acceptable to "abort" a child up to the age of 2 years.  Next will be to get rid of the old folks who are no longer "useful"?? Once you start, where does it end?