When Does Life Begin?

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park, Kan., has been charged with 29 misdemeanor counts of providing unlawful late-term abortions, the Associated Press is reporting.

Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline, an abortion opponent, also accuses the clinic of 23 felonies and 55 other misdemeanors in the 107-count charge, according to court records. The clinic, which is southwest of Kansas City, Kan., faces multiple counts of making a false writing, failure to maintain records and failure to determine viability.

107 criminal charges filed against Planned Parenthood
Judge finds probable cause that crimes were committed

Earlier this morning Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline filed a 107 count criminal complaint against Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. After reviewing the evidence presented, a Johnson County District Judge found probable cause on each count filed and ordered the corporation to appear on November 16, 2007 at 1:30 pm in Johnson County District Court. If convicted on all counts, the corporation faces more than $2.5 million in potential fines

..............So let's look at the science of this latest study, which appeared in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Using statistical techniques and reliable national health data, the study of eight European countries found, to a statistically significant degree, that the incidence of breast cancer increases with the incidence of earlier abortions. The researcher, Patrick Carroll, used the same mathematical model employed in a 1997 study that predicted with extraordinary accuracy breast cancer increases in England and Wales from 1998 to 2004. Using that model, Carroll predicts that countries with higher abortion rates -- England and Wales -- could expect a troubling increase in breast cancer rates. The Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, where abortion rates are lower, should experience a smaller increase. And in Denmark and Finland, where abortion rates have declined, cancer rates should similarly decline. Some will object because the study is "only" epidemiological -- meaning that it relies on a statistically significant relationship between the incidence of breast cancer and abortion to infer that one causes the other. The standard, but simple-minded, objection to epidemiological studies is that a correlation does not necessarily prove causation. That's true, to some extent. But, epidemiologists use correlations in more complex ways, combining them with a range of medical, sociological, psychological and other information to lead their research in the right direction, to support or debunk hypotheses, and toward solutions for significant public health problems............

..........The problem with dismissing the Carroll study because it is epidemiological is that you'll also have to dismiss a multitude of public health studies, including ones claiming a link between radon and lung cancer. These are the same epidemiological studies that alarmed millions of Americans, frightening them into buying radon detectors and creating a huge radon mitigation business. No study is perfect, and Carroll's shortcoming is that his data do not allow comparisons of individual women over time. But other major studies have, and according to one unchallenged compressive analysis of those studies, they show that a pregnant woman who has never had a child before and aborts in the first term increased her chance of breast cancer by 50 percent.
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The problem with dismissing the Carroll study because it is epidemiological is that you'll also have to dismiss a multitude of public health studies, including ones claiming a link between radon and lung cancer.

I've heard the rhetoric before. Give me something to be impressed by.

T
K
O

I'd be interested in you backing up that the medical community is against abortion.

T
K
O

Abortion And The Definition Of The Beginnings Of Human Life
Until the 1970s, medical professionals, human rights groups, and birth control providers traditionally understood Human Life to begin at conception (also termed "fertilization"):

Hippocratic Oath. The ancient Greek Hippocratic Oath - for thousands of years the standard for Western medical ethics - was routinely sworn by doctors upon medical school graduation.

It states: "I will neither give a deadly drug to anyone if asked for it, now will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy." This last sentence has now been deleted from most medical school commencement ceremonies.

American Medical Association. For 125 years, the American Medical Association took a firm anti-abortion position, declaring in 1859 that abortion is the "unwarranted destruction of human life." In 1871, the AMA denounced doctors who would perform abortions as "false to their professions, false to principle, false to honor, false to humanity, false to God." But, in 1989, the AMA called abortion a "fundamental right," to be decided "free of state interference" in the absence of compelling justification.

World Medical Association. Partially in response to revelations of medical war crimes at the Nuremberg Nazi trials, the World Medical Association in 1948 adopted a new physician's code, the Declaration of Geneva, which stated: "I will maintain the utmost respect for human life, from the time of conception." This declaration was reaffirmed in the 1970 Declaration of Oslo.

The United Nations. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly in 1959, stated that a child "needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth." This is reaffirmed in the 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Planned Parenthood in 1963. Planned Parenthood insisted that the organization's birth control campaign did not support abortion, stating: "An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun."

California Medical Association. The California Medical Association, in 1970, declared abortion to be "killing" and referred to "the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death."

Scientific Community. Science has determined that at conception/fertilization a new individual comes into being, possessing a unique genetic code that has already determined that individual's sex, fingerprints, hair and eye color, facial features, etc.

In the 1960s, some in the scientific community who were proponents of abortion and artificial contraception, changed the definition of the word "conception" to mean the time the embryo implants in the endometrium (the lining of the uterus/womb). Fertilization still is defined as the union of sperm and egg to produce the zygote, the first cell of the new human being.

Pregnancy was also redefined to begin at implantation, not at fertilization.

By redefining conception, the period from fertilization until implantation, approximately 7-10 days, these semantics spinners were able to denote the very early, unique human embryo as a "pre-embryo", a non-living, non-human entity, in order to circumvent issues of early abortion and the abortifacient abilities of artificial contraception and emergency contraceptives, such as the Plan B.

Would Making Abortion Illegal Violate Medical Ethics?
In 1972, a standard obstetrical textbook stated, "...[T]he more extreme view is that abortion should be available to any woman who does not wish the pregnancy to continue. The latter is obviously more a social than a medical issue or indication."1

The authors pointed to Nazi excesses and cautioned that "the state should never delegate the authority to the physician to be the judge or force him to participate in what is defined as eugenic sterilization. The same applies to medical abortion and a democratic society should be wary of such terms as abortion on demand" (emphasis added).2

Apparently, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, as ardent defenders of medically performed abortion on request, now ignore the above and have forgotten their ethical past.

In 1859, the AMA Committee on Criminal Abortion, which voiced its concern for a woman's health, also stated that abortion was "the wanton and murderous destruction of her child."3

A survey of 19th-century medical and legislative abortion opponents found that "safeguarding the mother's health was held to be secondary to the protection of the foetus as a rationale for anti-abortion laws...A law which has maternal health as its sole or main consideration is not likely to be worded in such a way that the human status of the foetus is recognized...In a law where the concern is with the woman's health, a woman is likely to be labeled as 'pregnant' rather than as 'being with child' or some other phrase which gives a human status to the foetus."4

But by 1981, the AMA would call induced abortion a "recognized medical procedure," the restriction of which would constitute an unacceptable "invasion of privacy."5

Former abortion provider Dr. Bernard Nathanson has said, "We must courageously face the fact - finally - that human life of a special order is being taken...Denial of this reality is the crassest kind of moral evasiveness."6

A 1970 editorail from California Medicine explained the reason for this evasiveness: "...[S]ince the old ethic has not been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone reallly knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected."7

More than 2,000 years ago the Hippocratic Oath forbade doctors from assisting at any abortion or suicide. Until the last 30 years of this century, that oath was medical ethics.

Diest TKO wrote:

I'd be interested in you backing up that the medical community is against abortion.

T
K
O

Hi Deist:

Are you talking about the entire medical community? If not - what percentage?

baddog1 wrote:

Diest TKO wrote:

I'd be interested in you backing up that the medical community is against abortion.

T
K
O

Hi Deist:

Are you talking about the entire medical community? If not - what percentage?

I would need to see an overwelming majority. Enough to rule out descrepency. Further, I'd like to see if those doctors that do not approve of abortion think it's the ethical for other's to make that choice regaurdless.

T
K
O

...... If at this point, said member still refuses to become pro choice, I would demand another........................... :wink:

I'd be interested in you backing up that the medical community is against abortion.

T
K
O

Abortion is killing a human!

baddog1 wrote:

...... If at this point, said member still refuses to become pro choice, I would demand another........................... :wink: