Activists Push for Abortion Training for All Medical Students, but What About Their Oath to Save Lives?
As multiple states attempt to protect unborn persons from being eliminated at abortion clinics or by mail-order abortion pills, pro-choice activists and feminists are pushing on another front to get medical colleges to include abortion in their curriculum.
The latest effort is an article by three second-year medical students at the University of Illinois College of Medicine appearing in a recent issue of MS Magazine. Trying to back up their claim that "abortion is healthcare", Audrey Mannuel, Maya Patel, and Caroline Beshers argue that medical schools should include abortion procedures in their teaching plans to future physicians.
They make two main points: First, that "misinformation that can discourage patients from seeking care," and second, "Educating health professionals on abortion care is a powerful method of preventing the politicization of medical care such as abortion access."
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Writing for LifeNews, Dave Andrusko responded to the students by exposing what their first point really means.
"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," he explains.
To the second reason, Andrusko answered, "Put another way, if physicians-in-the-making are immersed in performing abortion, they are less likely to protest at taking unborn life."
The pro-choice students also cite a 16-year-old national survey that revealed 23 percent of medical school programs did not offer any courses on abortion. Of the schools that did offer such lessons, "32 percent only had one abortion lecture during the clinical years."
Andrusko asked, "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.'"
In their article, the students also tried to liken giving opioid prescriptions 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," the students wrote.
"Do I have to spell out the difference between properly describing an opioid and taking the life of a defense unborn child?" Andrusko replied.
But what about the Hippocratic oath taken by medical students? "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'," Andrusko points out.
**Correction: In a previous version of the story, we mislabeled LifeNews, which is the source of Dave Andrusko's analysis. We apologize for the error.
