Vatican City Seek

The Letter to the Editor by Dr. W. AndrE Lafrance touches on several points we have discussed recently:    *    The fetus' welfare must be considered in medical         decisions.    *    Are abortions safe?           (1)  For fetuses?           (2)  For pregnant women?          *    Abortions are not medical procedures.   ############################################################ Medical Post: Volume 33, No. 41 - December 2, 1997 Letter: It is impossible to see abortion as a medical procedure To the Editor: In During abortions, MDs' duty is to the pregnant woman (letter, Oct. 7), Dr. M. Krieger writes that safe medical abortion does not refer at all to the fetus. My first reaction to this statement will be to say that while many in the pro-abortion camp find it convenient to leave con- siderations about the fetus out of any discussion on abortion, it is most disappointing to see a member of the medical profession doing likewise. What excuse can a physician offer for not taking into account this passage from William's Obstetrics (16th edition, 1980) which refers to obstetrics as maternal-fetal medicine and states: Happily, we have entered an era in which the fetus can be rightfully considered and treated as our second patient? My second reaction to Dr. Krieger's statement is to view the epithets safe and medical being affixed to the word abortion as a perfect illustration of what I would call a double oxymoron. It should indeed be obvious to any physician that in order to describe abortion as safe, one has to completely ignore - which is precisely what Dr. Krieger is doing - the child. But even for the woman whose child is killed by abortion, the procedure is not nearly as safe and harmless as Dr. Krieger would like us to believe. Isn't Dr. Krieger aware of the numerous and well documented psychological sequelae among women having had an abortion? These generally develop years or even decades after the abor- tion, and masquerade as a variety of psychiatric disorders which all too often are misdiagnosed as to their real etiology. Doesn't Dr. Krieger know that Planned Parenthood's own report Making Choices showed, for the approximately 1.6 million legal abortions performed each year in the U.S., a maternal death rate of approximately 1 per 100,000 and a 3 per 1,000 incidence of immediate major physical complications (hemorrhage, infection, perforation of the uterus, etc.)? As for abortion being considered a medical procedure, it helps to remember that the New Webster Dictionary of the English Language defines medical as pertaining to medicine and medicine as the science and art of preventing, curing and alleviating disease. Consequently, unless one is prepared to view pregnancy as a disease, it should again be obvious that abortion cannot in any way be regarded as a medical procedure. In fact, the only thing medical about abortions is that the procedure previ- ously done by the infamous back-alley butchers of yesteryear is now done by physicians. I submit that abortion, far from being a safe medical pro- cedure, constitutes a culpable dereliction of a physician's duty to his/her patients and a flagrant violation of the very first principle of ethical behavior for physicians: Consider first the well-being of the patient, as directed by the Cana- dian Medical Association's Code of Ethics.