Extract Exploring the question of a woman’s responsibility in becoming pregnant in order to decide on the permissibility of terminating that pregnancy is flawed, because the woman does not answer the first question: Am I killing another human being? If the answer is No, then perhaps McEvoy’s exercise of looking at specific examples of women seeking terminations may be useful. . . . If the answer is Yes, then all other considerations, compelling as they may be, will not have any greater value than that of the life of an unborn child. The woman’s degree of responsibility in becoming pregnant should not decide the value or fate of human life, which remains inviolable.
Abstract Background: Approximately 1.5 million abortions are performed each year in the United States. Little information has been published on the abortion attitudes and practices of family physicians. The object of this investigation was to assess the abortion attitudes and practices of family and general practice physicians in Kansas.
Methods: A 19-item self-administered survey questionnaire was designed and mailed to 856 family and general practice physicians in Kansas.
Results: A 63% survey response rate was obtained. Seventy-eight percent of the physicians reported that abortion should be legal, but only 56% of the respondents classified themselves as pro-choice. Conversely, only 8% reported that legal abortion should not be available, even though 33% classified themselves as pro-life. The majority of physicians reported that abortion is an appropriate option to save the life of the mother, in cases of rape or incest, and when a fetal anomaly is diagnosed. Only three respondents (0.5%) had performed abortions during the previous year. In general, female physicians and physicians over the age of 40 years (regardless of sex) were more likely to be pro-choice and to view a women’s personal decision as a circumstance in which abortion may be appropriate.
Conclusions: Physician’s views about abortion and their practice patterns are important components of health care for thousands of women each day.
Extract Conclusion When President Bush successfully thwarted passage of the Emergency Chinese Immigration Relief Act of 1989 and implemented his own order insisting upon “careful consideration” of victims who plead for political asylum because of coercive population control measures in their homelands, he unwittingly illustrated the need for a change in the statutory language. The Executive Order unwisely forces the issue of coercive population control policies into statutory language designed to protect victims of discrimination. Such manipulations would not be necessary if the Refugee Act of 1980 were amended to encompass the Handbook’s interpretation of the U.N. Protocol.
The interpretative guidelines to the U.N. Protocol, and derivatively to the Convention, call for a “conscientious objector” exception to military service. The grant of refugee status to individuals who prove “valid reasons of conscience,” even reasons distinct from religious claims, recognizes that fitting an individual within the protections of the refugee definition requires a judgment on the means other nations use to implement their policy ends, not just the ends themselves. Rather than relying solely on the five narrow grounds for granting asylum that were developed in response to the atrocities of World War II, the U.N. Protocol, as interpreted by the Handbook, also advocates protection for the individual persecuted by virtue of mandatory participation in a military service with which he morally disagrees. Because the debate regarding coercive population control considers the legitimacy of means employed in achieving governmental policy objectives, the logic of the conscientious objector exception also applies to claims such as that of Chang.
Extract [Translation] Too bad that by making the distinction between abortion (eugenic or selective) and abortion that is not not, he made at least two readers believe that he approves of the second. Sorry as I am for being one of those readers, I am delighted to be mistaken.
Extract A “chilling effect” brought about by federal abortion legislation may be the reason almost 1 in 10 physicians who had been performing abortions in Canada in 1989 stopped providing the service in 1990, a CMA survey indicates. . . . The data also confirm an earlier CMA estimate that 50 to 80 physicians have stopped performing abortions since Bill C-43 was tabled . . . . “The Canadian Medical Association is unequivocally opposed to Bill C-43,” she said, noting that the CMA was not alone . . .
Extract The question he must answer is, If the fetus is a human being (which indeed he or she is), what should he do? If a woman came in telling him that she was going to kill her 2-day-old baby, would he sit back not wanting to play “godlet”?
Extract Dr. Arsenault’s reasonable and logical protest that abortion is a case of doctor playing God is countered not by reason but by a humorous anecdote: style versus logic.
Extract Can Christians accept martyrdom on the one hand and reject euthanasia on the other? What makes one form of killing acceptable, the other reprehensible? What judgements are to be made, for example, if, during childbirth, a choice must be made between saving the life of the child or the life of the mother? How do we decide whose life is more important and, therefore, whose life must be saved? Who has the most to lose or the most to gain? What is fair? And who makes that decision?
Extract The facts Beck presents are frequently flawed and perverted to secure the impression he seeks to convey. For example, the effects of rubella during pregnancy were not “newly demonstrated” in 1967 but had been known for a quarter of a century. . . Beck’s distinction between abortion on the grounds of genetic abnormality and abortion carried out because the pregnancy is unwelcome appears to imply acceptance of the latter and puts him in a curious position. . . Beck attempts to discredit amniocentesis by quoting rare single case reports of damage presumed to be due to needle puncture, none of which were reported in the past 8 years and most of which occurred before the general use of real-time ultrasound monitoring. . . . Beck maintains that physicians should not be involved in prenatal screening for genetic anomalies or in the termination of a pregnancy involving a fetus with an abnormality of this type. . . Concomitantly, Beck apparently approves of the killing of normal fetuses in iatrogenically engineered multiple pregnancy.
Extract [Translation] Dr. Beck makes an eloquent plea against eugenic abortion. It is based on the right of the infant suffering genetic malformation to continue to develop until birth. But all children, even the normal ones, have this right morally if not legally; I am surprised that Beck’s solicitude does not extend to these.
