By the way, one quick point, as to this – “life begins at the moment of conception otherwise the woman’s body would discard/discharge the ‘dead’ ‘blob of tissue’ – just like it does the UNfertilized egg every 28 or so day” – the question is a moral one, not biological.

The same path was taken with marriage and divorce – first it was the sanctity of marriage until it became the “quality” of marriage. Now it’s “What is marriage, really?” First it was the sanctity of life until it became the “quality” of life. Now it’s “Well, when does life REALLY begin?” and “We don’t have a right to tell a woman what to do with her body.” Now it’s “You don’t have a right to obey your conscience and refuse to provide me an ELECTIVE PROCEDURE!”

By the way, life begins at the moment of conception otherwise the woman’s body would discard/discharge the “dead” “blob of tissue” – just like it does the UNfertilized egg every 28 or so days.

With abortion being a legal procedure, I have no problem with laws that protect the ability of women to get them, and I have no problem opposing laws that make it significantly harder for women to get them. My concern is that, mostly in other threads, I’ve read Ames and others as intimating that a pro-lifer simply has no business being a doctor. There was a thread a while back where someone compared a pro-life doctor to a scientologist psychiatrist. It doesn’t seem to present society with an undue burden to make sure that there remains a place for pro-life doctors, and abortion isn’t nearly as central to the practice of medicine as psychiatry is to, well, psychiatry. As you say, lots of doctors don’t perform abortions, and, for half of patients, one can very reliably predict in advance that they’ll never be interested in getting one, and so it doesn’t seem to me that a pro-lifer can’t be a valuable doctor.

It’s also worth noting that abortion is special in that it can’t be decided on “do no harm” grounds. As was discussed in another thread, the fact that deciding the moral issue at stake requires the determination of the number of persons involved means that there’s no obvious ‘libertarian’ position (everyone agrees that Jackson’s nose has no rights of its own). Unless the Hippocratic Oath can obligate doctors to murder a third party in order to further their patient’s interest, it cannot unambiguously require a doctor to perform an abortion, nor can it even unambiguously permit one. That the Supreme Court also doesn’t seem to understand that the determination of personhood is so central to the abortion issue is the main reason that I think political justice requires the repeal of Roe, even though I’m probably more thoroughly pro-choice than most here.

Your question is interesting. I don’t know what would happen. That would also hit the pro-choice movement pretty hard too, and for the same reason.

And thanks for the gedner correction :-) oops….

Your readers might also be interested in Michael Egnor’s nuclear stupidity re: this issue.

Thanks for the plug, and by the way, I’m a ‘she’.

not true.

women seeking abortions are given access to information on all options. the difference between the approaches of planned parenthood and pregnancy counseling centers is the, er, brainwashing aspect of information delivery. planned parenthood provides information without the manipulation and the preaching.

i agree with ames … a doctor exists to provide the best care for his or her patient … the patient that stands before him or her. period. the doctor’s role is not that of moral arbitrator or … more to the point … moral manipulator.

his or her patient has decided, most assuredly after a great deal of reflection, that abortion is the best choice. therefore, the doctor is bound by the hippocratic oath to provide the best service possible to insure the patient’s health … the same way michael jackson’s plastic surgeon is bound by oath to provide the best care possible when he wants to have more of his nose shaved off … the same way doctors are bound by law (not just oath) to follow a patient’s living will.

the AMA admonishes doctors to avoid specialties that collide with their consciences. that does not bar pro-life doctors from practicing gynecology. there are many, many, many gynecologists who do not perform abortions … less, i suspect, for moral reasons than for the headache of protests and liability … and fear for personal safety.

worrying about what doctors are being forced to say to patients is a slightly less serious worry than the problem jennykinx presents. the pro-life movement is winning with death by attrition. good luck trying to find an abortion in missouri … or other places in the south.

and this attrition has occurred quite well without a script doctors must follow.

***
on a related note (and not directed toward ANYONE in particular) … i have often (like, for at least 20 years) wondered this, and i hesitated bringing it up in another comment thread regarding abortion … but, what the heck …

i wonder how the pro-life movement would change … in membership size and composition … and even in existence … if every single abortion performed in america was performed on a latina or a black woman. the pro-life movement likes to talk about the one-million babies that would be saved each year. what would happen if that one-million were all black?