Posted on 06/09/2009 5:10:38 PM PDT by madprof98
If I’d passed her on the street, I probably wouldn’t have known her. Her gait is a bit stiff and her left eye somehow different from her right. She’s not famous, exactly, but some people might know her name: Emily Lyons. She’s the nurse who survived the 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham at the hands of Eric Rudolph.
I was 14 years old when that clinic was bombed, killing a police officer and spraying Emily’s body full of hot nails and shrapnel. Back then, I lived in a small Alabama town, went to church every Sunday and was adamantly opposed to abortion. But by the time I met Emily last year, I was president of the Birmingham chapter of Medical Students for Choice, a group supporting abortion rights. Watching her walk slowly into our fund-raiser on her husband’s arm —- a woman who’d endured more than 18 operations —- I thought of all she’d been through and knew that I’d come to the right decision in my support of reproductive rights.
That conviction only became stronger after I read that Kansas physician George Tiller had been murdered at his Wichita church.
I’m a third-year medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I plan to become an obstetrician-gynecologist. I dream of delivering healthy babies, working with families and supporting midwifery. But as part of my practice, I also envision providing abortions to women who need them.
The road I took to get here isn’t your stereotypical one. My parents are conservative Christians who believe abortion is wrong. Growing up, I naturally shared their view. But I’ve also wanted to be a doctor since I was 4 years old, and in high school, I began to feel drawn to issues of women’s health. In college, I designed my own major to broaden my understanding of women’s health by including psychology, sociology and women’s studies.
I also served as a counselor for a volunteer organization that helps victims of rape. I sat in hospital rooms with young women who would look at me and say, “I just couldn’t carry his baby.” I could feel their desperation.
At the same time, I found myself shocked at how little many of my friends —- women who were studying biology and planning to become doctors —- knew about their own sexual health. They didn’t know about or couldn’t get the reproductive health care they needed because of barriers put up by their culture, their religion and their parents.
I began to feel as if I were leading a double life. At school, the choices I saw women struggling with were forcing me to question my old convictions. When I went home, I’d go to church with my parents but would find that my views contrasted starkly with those I heard in the sermons. It was a difficult time, because I felt that neither my family nor my church would welcome my questions or understand my struggle.
For the most part, I don’t talk to my parents about those beliefs. They already feel as though I’ve turned my back on much of what they taught me because my husband and I bought a house and lived together for a few months before we were married. Two and a half years later, that rift isn’t fully healed. I know that my views on reproductive rights would be another blow.
But ultimately, we have more in common than they might think. I agree that ending an unwanted pregnancy is a tragedy. When I advocate for reproductive rights, for choice, I don’t claim that abortion is morally acceptable. I think that it’s a very private, intensely personal decision. But I was stunned when one of my professors, a pathologist and a Planned Parenthood supporter, told me that decades ago, entire wings of the university’s hospital were filled with women dying from infections caused by botched abortions. It’s clear that women who don’t want to be pregnant won’t be deterred by limited access to providers or to clinics. And I believe that it’s immoral to let them die rather than provide them with safe, competent care.
I still have a long way to go in my medical training. I’ve never witnessed an actual abortion procedure, though I have been trained, through my work in Medical Students for Choice, in manual vacuum aspiration, a simple procedure used for both incomplete miscarriages and elective terminations in the first trimester. I plan to choose a residency program that provides further training —- a place where I won’t worry that asking to be taught to perform an abortion could somehow limit my future options. At the start of medical school, I was very careful about how I presented my views to the faculty for fear that I could jeopardize my grades or hurt my chances for recommendations or of being accepted into a program run by any of the professors.
As I continue my education, my views on abortion are still evolving. Take late-term abortions. When I first heard about them, I was horrified.
It wasn’t until I spent time in ultrasound rooms in graduate school that I began to see late-trimester abortions in a very different light. In one case, the patient’s baby had just been diagnosed with a lethal congenital anomaly. The high likelihood was that it wouldn’t survive after birth for more than a few minutes. As long as the baby remained in her mother’s womb, however, she would live. I asked the physician what this woman’s options were. The answer was, not many. She could choose to continue the pregnancy, but then she might be waiting for almost 20 more weeks to give birth to a baby that would never take more than a few breaths on its own. She was past the point where she could legally terminate the pregnancy in Alabama. If she could get an appointment in Atlanta within the next week, she might be able to have the procedure there. Beyond that, there were only a few physicians in the nation who would perform an abortion in such a case.
I could hardly wrap my mind around the agony that this woman and her husband must have been facing. They needed a caring physician to help them through this dark moment, and if they chose not to continue the pregnancy, they also needed a physician who was both skilled enough and brave enough to provide them with the care they needed. They needed Dr. Tiller.
I can’t yet imagine doing the kind of work that he did. When I think about my future practice, I think about a doctor I met at a conference who spoke candidly about the harassment his children endured at school because of what their father did. I wonder what seventh grade might be like for my children if I choose to provide abortions.
I’m not the only one with questions. Once, after Medical Students for Choice co-hosted a panel discussion on reducing the number of abortions by providing better education on reproductive health, some of my classmates approached close friends of mine. They were puzzled that an abortion-rights group was talking about wanting to reduce abortions —- and that it viewed ending unwanted pregnancies as a tragedy. Mostly, though, they were confused about what I was doing there. “I know Roz goes to church every Sunday and that she’s a good person,” one classmate asked. “Why would she be involved in a group like this?”
I know my answer to that question. Someday I hope my classmates will understand, too.
Rozalyn Farmer Love is a third-year medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine.
Trying to rationalize the killing of innocent yet to be born children from the pro-death crowd, always makes me think of murderers trying to rationalize for the jury the killing of a stranger for his wallet.
One of my most fervent daily prayers is to pray for the conversion of those who are pro-choice, because once upon a time I, too, was as rabidly pro-choice as one could get.
Becoming Pro-life came in stages though. I strongly disapproved of late-term abortions, I figured once the baby is "made" then it was too late. Then my thinking evolved to "do it early or don't do it at all" until I saw the little baby feet pins and pictures of tiny, dismembered babies--hands and arms no bigger than a dime--at 9 weeks.
Then I have to credit Mother Teresa for the final reckoning. One of her quotes was "Abortion is the work of the Devil" and that did it. Who is the father of lies and murder?
You can't call yourself a "Christian" and side with the Devil on any issue. It's serving two masters.
Even the Hindus have stern admonitions against abortion. "But the Vedas teach that wanton loss of a human body is a serious transgression against the karmic law." --Swami Sri Yukteswar
How is her obvious revulsion at this consistent with being eager to dismember little tykes in utero...
She’s just another educated idiot.
I’m guessing this brat wrote this garbage partly to humiliate her parents.
Hopefully, she ends up ................
This individual is NOT getting the moral guidance she silently screams for.
Nope.
When good decent Americans are killed by Muslim terrorists we are told that it is our fault for provoking them. Why isn’t killing innocent children ever considered to be provocative?
So she willingly allowed herself to be indoctrinated by the feminists. Too bad she didn't also educate herself on the psychological horrors that women endure AFTER their abortions. She might have ended up with a more balanced view of the issue.
I’ve read Bernard Nathanson’s book and heard him speak. In the inner cities, yes, many, many women hospitalized from the complications of abortions - but they mostly lived. I asked him how many women were dying from abortion a year in the late 50s, early 60s and he said it was a couple hundred.
See the graph I posted in 34. The number of women dying from abortion has NOTHING to do with legality, the number dropped as antibiotics were developed (the drop followed the same patterns as other minor surgeries).
she is also not getting the correct medical education..yet.
Most doctors I know, Christian or not, emphatically state there is almost NO reason to have a late term abortion for medical reasons. And yes, doctors do not like to do this proceedure...legal or not.
I was at best indifferently pro-choice -- until *I* was faced with a decision about my wife carrying a child that was FAR worse than inconvenient and which promised both of us life-long grief if a number of conditions didn't tip our way.
We chose life. Some conditions didn't tip our way (the most important ones did) and we suffered years of grief over that... but... that child is now near grown, bright, in college, happy and studying to be an engineer just like Dad.
There's a story here just waiting to be written, but we aren't ready yet. It needs a conclusion and we haven't got that. Not sure we ever will.
The legalization of abortion in America meant the Oath was out. But even with abortion legalized, pro-life physicians could still practice according to their consciences. The American College of OB/GYN, however, threw down the gauntlet in November 2007 with its Ethics Statement No. 385, which defined any OB/GYN doctor who did not perform or refer for abortion as unethical. The American Board of OB/GYN quickly followed with a new requirement that an OB/GYN doctor had to agree with the ethics of the College to pass the OB/GYN boards. Washington state and Oregon have declared euthanasia (assisted suicide) a legal activity in their states. Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, advocates infanticide when he writes, "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all."
So, how do I respond to this challenge to my rights of conscience as a pro-life OB/GYN physician in this age?
Life and death: Death is upon us. "Us" being doctors.
Research has shown repeatedly that, as students go through medical education, they tend to become less empathetic, more narcissistic, and less systematic in their ethical decision-making. Something is seriously wrong with our medical schools.
What a hypocrite. If it's immoral for them to die rather than provide them with safe competent care, how is it not immoral to actively kill their babies?
This woman may have been raised in a conservative Christian home, but she certainly isn't.
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