Convincing A Woman To “Think Twice” About Abortion Is Unethical?

Ken McCracken • November 27, 2007

It apparently is in Great Britain:

A family doctor faces being struck off [the medical register] for daring to suggest to women seeking an abortion that they should think twice.
Dr Tammie Downes says at least eight grateful mothers have children today which they would have terminated until she asked them to consider the consequences. But Dr Downes, 36, is now being investigated by the General Medical Council for a possible breach of ethical guidelines. If charged and found guilty of professional misconduct, she could be removed from the medical register and forced from her job.
The GMC, which regulates doctors, is understood to have received a complaint from another doctor who claims Dr Downes is promoting her anti-abortion views to patients.

I am ardently pro-life, but at the very least I would think that both sides of the abortion issue could agree that the decision to abort is a weighty one that should not be made lightly. If that’s true, I fail to see how encouraging a woman to take the abortion decision seriously is at all “unethical.”
Of course, Great Britain’s socialized medicine system has a role to play in this as well. There the doctors work for the government, and thus must practice medicine the way the government tells them too. If you step outside their guidelines, meaning you don’t act like some uncaring abortion automaton, you get in trouble.

Tags: Abortion, International Scene, Politics

Paulie B

If people think… They might come to realize the truth. An unthinking populace is what most politicians want.
kbiel

I know that most physicians do not swear by the original Hippocratic oath, but do they even study it any more?

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
docdave

Great Britain's socialized medicine system has a role to play in this as well. There the doctors work for the government, and thus must practice medicine the way the government tells them too.

Socialized medicine = just another brick in the wall of totalitarianism.
WOOFX

The obverse would be an MD
suggesting to women
who came for prenatal care
that they consider abortion.
Dr Downes…

"I give them the facts and allow them space to think through the decision that they are making.

"It has to be the mother's choice. I have no right to make that choice for them
kbiel

Poodle whiffs it again. A doctor always has the duty to give their patients all pertinent information regarding the treatment. In the case of prenatal care, allowing women to remain pregnant (or not suggesting abortion) is not a treatment since the pregnancy will progress naturally without medical interference. Or perhaps you are suggesting that doctors should suggest unnecessary treatments for otherwise healthy patients.

Conversely, women seeking abortions are not looking for natural progression of a natural condition, but for medical intervention. All medical intervention carries some amount of risk of side effects. In the case of abortions, uncontrolled bleeding, infections, and permanent damage to the uterine lining, making a woman effectively sterile, are all possible side effects. Additionally, there are the guaranteed side effects of temporary hormonal imbalance and emotional distress.
WOOFX

kbiel, pregnancy also kills.
kbiel

Poodle,

Uh no. Pregnancy has never killed anyone. Complications of pregnancy have killed women, but pregnancy itself is quite safe. I think a world population of 6 billion and counting has proven that.
http://Array Paulie B

Woof, your argument isn't logical because you treat pregnancy as a disease, but it's most certainly not.
Bat One

Paulie,

Excellent point! How many times are we told, ad nauseum, that its a woman's choice?

If its her choice, why are we paying?
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

In socialist regimes, life itself is a burden. It is another mouth to be fed, another body to be clothed and housed, and another burden on the limited resources.

The view of life is the fundamental difference between the left and the right. The left sees each new life as a burden. The right sees each new life as a blessing and as a potential solution to life's problems.

Given that dichotomy, the socialist view of pro-life as "unethical" fits in with their MO.

SayAnythingBlog.com

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