Posted on 06/05/2009 8:30:36 PM PDT by rhema
Mortality indeed stalks us all. But I'm talking about the death cultureabortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.
The death peddlers here and abroad seek to remove legal protection from pro-life doctors who refuse to perform abortion, refer for abortion, or participate in euthanasia. Euphemisms like "reproductive freedom," the "right to choose," and "death with dignity" justify the assault on our patient's lives and our rights of conscience. But in the midst of this inversion of right and wrong, pro-life doctor groups worldwide are banding together to form a Hippocratic Registry of Physicians.
Admittedly, physicians were not always healers. Millennia ago, healers used their power and status in society to kill and otherwise take advantage of the weak and helpless. Hippocrates, or someone like him, recognized the problem, and that is how we came to have the oath the public thinks we doctors all take, the Oath of Hippocrates.
Physicians who sign on to the Hippocratic Registry acknowledge the oath's six concepts: transcendence, which means submission to a higher authority; medicine as a moral, not just technical, activity; respect for life, meaning no abortion or euthanasia; a covenant between the physician and patient, not just a code of conduct; physician honesty and integrity; and collegiality between like-minded physicians.
Of course, we doctors don't take Hippocrates' Oath any longer and haven't for decades. New doctors recite a much changed charge filled with superficial, contemporary language, if they recite anything at all. Hippocrates' Oath has been relegated to the dustbin of modern ethical thought. "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give a woman an abortive remedy," it reads.
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? If my rights of conscience are legislated away, how long before the state revokes my license to practice medicine for refusing to perform or refer for abortion? How long before admission to medical school requires a promise to support death? (Get rid of those troublesome pro-lifers at the front end.)
This Hippocratic Registry of Physicians encourages me. The group includes doctors of any faith who value life and the tenets of Hippocrates' Oath. Although in its infancy, one could imagine a similar registry of other medical organizations such as hospitals, nursing homes, hospice organizations, pharmaciesa literal competing health-care system that honors life.
As our society "advances" to barbarisms abandoned millennia ago, I pray Hippocrates' idea will again catch fire and people will once again seek care from doctors with whom their life is safe and sacredno matter what.
Matt Anderson is a practicing OB/GYN in Minnesota and blogs regularly at mdviews.wordpress.com; more information on the Hippocratic Registry of Physicians is available at hippocraticregistry.com
Although I will not face pressure from the abortion industry, the euthanasia and assisted suicide movements will sooner or later impact me. That will be the point I leave medicine (unless socialized medicine comes first). While I faced some ridicule for it, I was able to opt out of observing abortions during my training (25 yrs ago)
However, I recognize that sooner or later it will no longer be optional to have a medical license and participate in the culture of death. At that point many of us who have been hanging in will leave. After that doctors will no longer by physicians, but butchers. Good luck finding quality medical care from a physician trained in this country! Those of us with a conscience will retire at the advent of socialized medicine, or when prescribing death becomes a requirement.
Obama’s Universal Healthcare will most probably have assisted suicide to be funded to kill off the boomers as they didn’t have enough children to replace themselves or create future taxpayers to pay for their old age health needs.
25 yrs ago mine was shortened and sanitized. We were also not required to take the oath, but were given a copy of it with our diploma.
Our society's willingness (not all by a far stretch) to accept this evil and immorality, or turn away from at and close their eyes to it, is the root cause that is leading to even worse, and has handed us a leader like thBrack Hussein Obam,a.
The greatest guilt today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting...the people who believe that the content of ideas need not be examined, that principles need not be defined, and that facts can be eliminated by keeping one's eyes shut.-Rand
THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IN HIS OWN WORDS
NOW WE KNOW WHAT A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER DOES
OBAMA, THE STOCK MARKET, AND ENERGY
THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S UPBRINGING
God bless you.
In a related situation, Catholic doctors have formed the Catholic Medical Association. For details, please go to cathmed.org.
See my #28. I have founded a local guild in my home diocese.
“BY THY HOLY AND IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, O MARY, DELIVER US FROM EVIL.”—Prophetic Prayer taught by Our Lady of America to Sister Mary Ephrem, Convent of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, Rome City, Indiana, 1956. (www.OurLadyofAmerica.org)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.