abortion is failure-

failure of everything else that should be in place that leads up to that procedure– failure of a system to educate society about the responsibilities and risks of sex and empower people to be safer, of sex education in our schools, failure to keep families out of poverty, keep women safe, etc etc. if pro-lifers really care about life, shouldn’t they be concerned about life that comes before the baby?

And Robert, I think the commenters above are trying really hard to be respectful of your wife while at the same time explaining to you why her point of view is wrong.

The problems with health care professionals making moral choices that impact patient care are obvious. You say she “would not perform an abortion if asked” — but you seem to imply that she is not an unyielding pro-lifer. So, as a doctor, would she not perform an emergency abortion on a woman with an ectopic pregnancy? Would she refuse to perform one where the fetus is viable but the mother’s health is in danger?

Because if she would perform an abortion in cases of medical necessity, then what you’re saying is she would refuse to perform one in cases where she believes the abortion is for the mother’s “convenience,” and that the mother’s right to that convenience is less important than the fetus.

That type of judgment is quite frankly not her business. But it doesn’t matter what she thinks about a woman’s choice to have an abortion, as long as she’s not in the business of providing abortions. However, if she is against ANY abortion, including those for medical necessity, it would be irresponsible of her to work with pregnant women. She can’t possibly predict what situations may occur, and she could end up putting her patients’ lives in danger by refusing them care.

The larger point, though, is sort of illustrated by some of the reactions to my comment. She’s not a bad person, and her objections to abortion are not motivated by a lack of reflection on the issue, an all-important ideology, or a belief that a woman under her care is worth less than the associated fetus.

This kind of drives me nuts. The problem with these sorts of “objections to abortion” that are “not motivated by a lack of reflection on the issue…” is that if you follow through your opposition of abortion to its logical end, well, it kind of has to come to the conclusion that the woman is worth less than the fetus. I’m not saying that it’s always easy or straightforward to come to these conclusions — examining our own biases rarely is.

Look at it this way — I never gave much thought to a lot of things, including why people are anti-choice. I figured it was some religious thing, or whatever, and it was no concern of mine. Only when I started really reading up on feminism (like, really recently — last couple years kind of thing — I spent college looking at rocks) did I realize that these anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-comprehensive sex ed kinds of points of view come from a common place. They come from a very, very ingrained view of women as less than human. Sometimes these ingrained notions are so below-the-radar, they can even be held by women. My boyfriend has a hard time believing this, but it’s true. The dysfunction of the culture should not be minimized, and the ability of people to hold firm, passionate beliefs that are not in their best interests is well-known.

I guess all I’m trying to say is that your wife may think that she’s thought through things rationally, or whatever, but that she may have such deep-seated prejudices that she’s not even aware of them. I know I sure wasn’t.

My wife is interested in pediatrics and internal medicine, and wants to go into family practice.

May I suggest a med/peds program? Not only would that avoid the possibility of being asked to perform abortions during residency, it would avoid all the surgery aspects of FP, which most people who are into the internal medicine like specialties loathe.

I certainly don’t deny the existence of people, and doctors

Doctors and people are separate catagories? I’m not sure whether to feel insulted or complimented… (Yeah, I know what you meant, just couldn’t resist…)

If you fail to seek medical treatment for your child when your child is sick, you are guilty of child abuse.

nah, you’re just a Jehovah’s witness or a Christian Scientist. or a new age woo-woo.

My wife is interested in pediatrics and internal medicine, and wants to go into family practice. The good news is that her position on abortion does come from desire to protect those under her care, and doesn’t extend to thinking it should be illegal, or to actively preventing a patient from getting an abortion.

Mom, who’s a life-long feminist, has also been working on her, and she’s coming around to the idea that a respect for life, not to mention an oath to do no harm, is much less black-and-white than she’s previously considered. My wife’s clinical experiences are having a positive effect, as well.

The larger point, though, is sort of illustrated by some of the reactions to my comment. She’s not a bad person, and her objections to abortion are not motivated by a lack of reflection on the issue, an all-important ideology, or a belief that a woman under her care is worth less than the associated fetus.

I certainly don’t deny the existence of people, and doctors, with an axe to grind (for instance, Bush’s heads of the FDA, as well as most of the ethicists and doctors on his bioethics panel). I don’t think, however, that people like that make up even a majority of our opponents. We can’t change everyone, but by demonizing those on the other side rather than trying to understand what makes them tick, we run the risk alienating the ample number who just haven’t come around yet.

Creating laws against harming the foetus would be to punish women who are poor, who suffer from addiction, who have little access to pre-natal healthcare. The best thing we could for their children would be to improve the health of these women by giving them the tools to decide if and when they want to become (or stay) pregnant and the access to services and help that will keep them safe and healthy without imposing anything on them – whether they’re pregnant or not. Making a pregnant woman a sort of demi-person with limited rights which she shares with the foetus she is carrying is not the solution.

As a woman who suffers from endometriosis, I know that doctors can believe they know what’s best for me when they in fact know a lot less about the condition than I do and sometimes come out with old, discredited myths (for example, that having a baby will “cure” endometriosis – this is just not true) or are far too ready to go to extreme surgical options like hysterectomy and won’t listen to what I as the patient want. Fortunately most of my docs have been great and have worked with me rather than handed down a treatment plan from on on high. However, there are still some doctors with a god complex out there who haven’t absorbed the basic meaning of patient rights – whether or not it comes from a well-meaning place.

Because they have magic powers that let them immediately assess your life and make decisions “for your own good” that will obviously be better than any decisions you can make for yourself.

All snark aside, people more often than not have limited choices in healthcare providers (have you tried to find a single-woman friendly OB/GYN in a red state lately?) and a (future) doctor who’s never even met me, has already decided that her ideology is more important than my life. It’s terrifying.

I don’t think so. How can you trust a doctor who doesn’t consider you – the paying customer, the fully developed human – to be the real patient?