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.”
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.
HD Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
Major ramifications would arise from requiring those seeking to go into the medical industry to receive abortion training.
For one, it would effectively purge Christians and Conservatives from public health, as most would rightfully be unwilling to violate their conscience. In so doing, the same pushback would not be present in the industry against the culture of death. This is especially concerning considering the fact that many governments around the world are actively promoting abortion, euthanasia, as well as other immoral and dangerous procedures.
Attempting to force doctors and nurses to violate their conscience is nothing new in the United States. In 2016, an Obamacare rule sought to force doctors to help facilitate gender-transition surgeries and abortions. In June of 2020, the Trump administration overturned this rule.
Fast forward to 2021, the conscience of doctors and nurses again have been placed in the crosshairs, by mandates requiring them to be fully vaccinated. Many have been unwilling to cave to the pressure to be vaccinated because of their belief in the sanctity of life.
In the way they are unwilling to perform abortions, they are also unwilling to receive a shot that used aborted fetal cell lines in its production.
Harbingers Daily reporter, Brandon Beckham, recently explained in his article, “Clash Over Vaccine Mandates & Religious Freedom Gains National Spotlight,” that it is “critical” that Christians stand strong for their religious freedom:
Scripture teaches that people are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27). As the late Reverend Billy Graham once wrote, “The Bible places the highest value on human life. It is sacred and of inestimable worth to God, who created it ‘in His own image.’ The Bible recognizes the unborn as being fully human.”
For many Christians, rejecting a vaccine they view as violative of the sanctity of life is necessary to maintaining a clear conscience before God. As Pastor John MacArthur writes, “Paul [the Apostle] spoke of the importance of a clear conscience (1 Timothy 3:9) and warned against anything that would defile or muddy the conscience (1 Corinthians 8:7; Titus 1:15).”
In Titus chapter 2, the apostle Paul, speaking about servants (or modern-day employees) instructs believers to be obedient, hard-working, and reserved. However, Paul emphasized that these things were not to come at the expense of “fedelity,” meaning their conviction of truth and faithfulness to Biblical teachings.
