What Say We Abort This Obnoxious Idea

What’s a stronger term than “outrage”? Or “ugly”? Or “morally intolerable”?

None is vehement enough to blast the unconscionable new ruling that all medical programs training doctors in obstetrics are to be required to teach them to do abortions.

Never mind that many physicians consider it morally and professionally abhorrent to end the life of an unborn baby on demand. Or that the goal of medical training is to save life, not to destroy it. Or that some hospitals and medical teaching programs are run by religious organizations that consider abortion evil.

Do it, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has just decreed. And that organization can make its edict stick. Programs that train physicians in medical specialties need accreditation to attract graduate students and to get federal funds for the services these doctors provide as residents. Doctors must complete accredited training programs to be certified as specialists.

Pro-choice advocates hail the move as a way to provide more access to abortion for women who want the procedure. Thirty-one percent of obstetrical residency programs do not give abortion training - compared to 7.5 percent in 1976, they say.

Abortion is now done primarily in clinics, not hospitals. But for many women, access to a clinic is not as simple as going to a pharmacy in the mall. Many counties have no abortion facilities at all - a situation pro-choice leaders decry as a denial of women’s abortion rights.

Pro-choice advocates say many physicians don’t do abortions because they have been frightened by “anti-abortion terrorists.”

But the primary reason so many doctors don’t do abortions is simply abhorrence for what abortion really is. It can’t be easy or casual for a physician dedicated and trained to help babies be born normal and healthy to destroy them on demand instead.

Obstetricians understand better than anyone that an unborn baby isn’t an unnecessary blob of tissue. Whatever the euphemisms, they know that it is living, is human, is unique and that abortion kills it. Killing the unborn isn’t why most physicians decided to become doctors.

How can a doctor be forced to shift his moral bearings from trying to help babies be born normal and healthy to killing them on demand, even if that solves a problem for the mother? We don’t solve other problems by killing someone who is inconvenient or unwanted.

The accreditation council says a resident with moral or religious objections can be excused from the training. And teaching institutions which refuse to teach the procedure because of moral scruples must arrange to have their residents taught it elsewhere.

Even so, “coercing people and institutions to participate in the destruction of innocent life is a great evil,” as Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles says. He’s chairman of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities.

Why should graduate students who want to become obstetricians be required to learn how to kill the unborn before they can be certified as specialists? Their profession should be concerned with the creation and development of new life - not with its deliberate termination.

It’s ironic that abortion supporters who call themselves “pro-choice” aren’t willing to allow physicians and teaching hospitals to make their own choices on this issue.

If a teaching institution does not want to train its doctors to kill the unborn, it should have no obligation to do so or be required to arrange for them to be trained elsewhere.

Doctors who want to learn how to abort the unborn can seek out the training themselves. Prochoice supporters concerned about teaching more physicians can provide the instruction through abortion clinics.

The Supreme Court did rule that abortion is legal. That doesn’t mean doctors must be pressured into providing it or even that all women are entitled to abortion services located for their convenience. Pro-choice supporters have no right to force their demands on doctors and teaching institutions through the accreditation process.

The new requirement isn’t scheduled to go into effect until Jan. 1, 1996. It should be immediately challenged by the hospitals involved. If it isn’t rescinded before the end of the year, it should be ignored.

The result could be a legal battle over the accreditation issue - or, if necessary, the formation of a new accrediting organization that allows physicians to respect life in its whole continuum and acknowledges that “choice” has more meanings than simply killing the unborn.

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