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Betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath
We live in a time when doctors are not only willing to kill babies in the womb up until they’re born, but they are also trying to punish other doctors who don’t agree with them. This state of affairs is only one more example of how the woke medical profession has allowed itself to abandon its principles and ethics.
The most recent battle occurred when the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) was excluded from a conference near Washington, D.C., sponsored by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Council on Resident Education. The pro-life association wasn’t told that they were excluded until they arrived at the conference:
Dr. Christina Francis incoming CEO of the pro-life group, said the doctors weren’t told about the cancellation until after arriving in Maryland, even though the organization booked the booth last year and has participated in the conference for the last 15 years.
She pushed back with a video posted Monday on Twitter challenging the CEO of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to a debate on the health consequences of elective abortion.
You may think that this decision was a slight that was annoying but could be ignored. But larger issues dominate the fight:
Doctors who rely on educational certifications from formerly prestigious credentialing medical associations are being threatened with a form of de-platforming. The loss of needed certifications can destroy a medical career. It has a chilling effect on open and free discussion and honest patient treatment.
In the face of this dismissal of unborn life, doctors and medical students who don’t conform, or at least don’t remain silent about being pro-life, may lose their ability to practice medicine if radical groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists get their way in silencing them. State medical boards rely on input from these third-party associations to help determine who is fit to practice medicine. Prestige and promotion are often tied to such training and certification.
ACOG accuses the banned organization of spreading “misinformation,” the common woke trope used.
I visited the website of both organizations, and the contrast was informative. Here is the main section of the ACOG mission statement:
ACOG’s mission is to support our members to improve the lives of all people seeking obstetric and gynecologic care, their families, and communities.
ACOG’s vision is an equitable world in which exceptional and respectful obstetric and gynecologic care is accessible to all.
Available to all except for babies.
Contrast the ACOG mission with AAPLOG’s:
The reason AAPLOG exists is to encourage and equip its members and other concerned medical practitioners to provide an evidence-based rationale for defending the lives of both the pregnant mother and her pre-born child.
We aim to make known the evidence-based effects of abortion on women as well as the scientific fact that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, with the goal that all women, regardless of race, creed or national origin, will be empowered to make healthy and life-affirming choices. AAPLOG’s organizational vision is to be the pre-eminent medical voice that informs the medical community, policy makers and the public on the importance of declining to use death as a therapeutic option, which respects the dignity of all human life and prohibits the taking of a life by a medical practitioner, including the lives of pre-born children.
Both websites elaborate on their statements, although only AAPLOG lists the mission statement on its first page and also states its belief in the Hippocratic oath.
* * * *
I am still trying to absorb the fact that ACOG members, practitioners who are tasked above any other medical doctors to bring new life into the world, seem to have no qualms about killing babies. That they are prepared to punish AAPLOG for standing by its own standards and for treasuring both the mothers and babies that will be born. That they are threatening the future of new doctors who will realize that they can’t acknowledge their belief in the sanctity of life if they want to help babies be born.
It is a travesty that boggles the mind.
Published in Culture
Mrs Rodin and I viewed a video of incoming medical students at Columbia University pledging a “new” Hippocratic Oath. If this doesn’t chill you, nothing will. Part of the medical establishment has become a death cult — not just babies, any disfavored group.
“Misinformation” means “they are going to say things we can’t credibly refute.”
Not only are they inarticulate, they are cowardly as well.
Why don’t they just include, “I promise to kill babies when ever I am asked to do so.” At least it would be honest. Good grief, it’s so ugly.
As you allude to (I think) we’ll probably just kill people when they request it, because they can’t get the care they want (as they are essentially doing in Canada). Sigh.
Well said. They demonstrate cowardice when they didn’t have the guts to tell AAPLOG ahead of time that they didn’t want them there.
Don’t arrest these doctors. The free market will sort it out. If people want a 9 month pregnancy terminated or even a fully born baby outside the womb killed that’s just liberty. Government acting to end the practice is scarier than the practice itself. Now let’s all vote for Nikki Haley telling us we are more pro woman than democrats for supporting her. Conservatism.
Well played.
My wife and I are still watching Grey’s Anatomy. It’s been trash for a while, and has always been hostile to anything to the right of AOC, but, for me, I want to see it to the end since I’ve been there since the beginning.
In this past episode, one of the plotlines involved a woman who was exhausted from dealing with her two kids and had gotten accidentally pregnant because her husband’s condom broke. Once they were able to stabilize her with an IV for her dehydration, etc., as she was getting ready to be discharged she broke down and said that she had suffered from postpartum depression with both her prior pregnancies and the therapy and medication didn’t help. She wasn’t sure she could do this a third time. Lucky for her the top-notch staff at the hospital were quick to tell her that they could abort her child lickety-split and she would not have to worry about postpartum depression. They actually acted out the entire abortion with the doc explaining each part (they left out anything that might have been at all gross or realizing that there was a child that died in that scene). It was aseptic and sterile with no pain, suffering, or remorse. Her Husband (out of town for work) was on the phone the entire procedure.
As is my usual watching this show, I was reading a book most of the time. Their pro-abortion agenda has been over the top,even more than they usually have. Oh, the strawmen…
It didn’t matter that postpartum depression doesn’t last forever, and I believe there are treatments. Just get rid of even the possiblity . . . thanks, David.
Wow, is that show still on? I thought it ended years ago.
My far left Congress-critter is not an OB-GYN but a female pediatrician, a Democrat of course, this being western WA, who endorses abortion.
https://schrier.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-schrier-announces-new-bill-protect-doctors-and-access-abortions
Politics aside, a baby doctor all in on abortion makes me ill.
Well, it still makes money, but the main character is gone.
Any woman all in on abortion makes me… well, disgusted, really.
But they still call it Gray’s Anatomy? Weird.
Me, too.
A question just popped into my head. Recall that during the pandemic what were described as elective surgeries were cancelled per the edict of Fauci and other Public Health officials and these elective surgery restrictions were in place for at least a year in many states and even longer in blue states. What I wonder is if this elective surgery restriction extended to abortion. With few exceptions (such as risk to the life of the mother-to-be), abortion is about as elective a surgery as there is. Although I don’t know the answer, my guess is that at least in blue states abortions proceeded as usual despite this elective surgery restriction.
How can an obgyn be anything but pro-life? I would think once you had brought one wonderful, beautiful human being into the world, any misguided urge to kill them would be completely purged from your soul.
Maybe it was never really from their soul, it was just the money? Last I heard, OB/GYN are among the top earners.
Barack Obama´s opposition to the state-level Born Alive Infants Protection Act in Illinois was what convinced me that he was an unctuous, reptile-hearted, worm-tongued fraud back before his national career really started. This newest level of heartless cruelty from the medical establishment is equally revolting.
Except if they are “unwanted”; if you don’t think bodies have souls, there is no downside for doing Moloch’s work.
The first part that chills me and gives evidence of their willingness to embrace lies is the ridiculous locution: “pregnant persons” in their opening sentence describing “all people seeking obstetric..care.” No, they’re women. Only women can get pregnant. This is most certainly one place where the science is settled. Men can not get pregnant. While women are indeed a subset of “persons,” human decency and correct grammatic specificity requires them to be called “women.”
I stopped watching it after the episode with the “Thank God for Obamacare” theme.
A lot of women get fed a steady diet of nice lies about abortion. All to make it seem anything but what it actually is.
Of course. Fortunately, there is an organization that solicits donations for ultrasounds at pregnancy centers. We are told that once women see the babies in their wombs, a large percentage decide to keep them. That’s about as real as one can get.
Too bad they apparently don’t do that on Gray’s Anatomy.
As an aside, isn’t it bizarre that we expect medical doctors to follow the “Hippocratic Oath”?
It’s an oath sworn to the pagan “gods” Apollo, Aesculapius, Hygeia, and Panacea. Yes, there was a Greek “god” — “goddess,” actually — named Panacea.
I wonder when such an idolatrous practice became common in Western, formerly Christian, countries.
Does the Bible say much about how physicians are supposed to behave?
Maybe that’s why.
That and maybe because medical practitioners predate the Bible?
In advance of the Referendum to remove the pro-life article (40.3.3) from the Constitution of Ireland, a committee of the legislature was set up to discuss the issue. In answer to criticisms that the committee was biased in favour of repeal, the Chairwoman ( a prominent abortion campaigner herself) alleged that it was difficult to find any pro-life doctors to give evidence to the committee.
Fast-forward to today and about 90% of doctors in Ireland refuse to participate in abortion. This is gratifying, but conscientious objection will come under increasing pressure.
They might just make it so that abortions don’t have to be done by a licensed physician.
That’s fascinating, Charles. Do you have a sense of the reasons for the change?
Hi Susan, The 90% of doctors were always there but the committee preferred to pretend they didn’t exist or were a tiny minority. Kangaroo committees aren’t exclusive to the USA!