Are Religious women in Boise being sold abortions?
Pro-Choicers often intone that a woman’s choice on abortion should be left between a woman, her doctor, and her God. Let’s for a moment accept this point for the sake of argument, (though rarely is an abortion performed by the woman’s personal doctor, but by some other doctor she has never met and hopes to never see again.)
It’s fair to ask what the role of the doctor in all this? It would seem the role of the doctor would be to provide medical information/advice to the woman. If you answered that it’s the job of the doctor to insert himself into the relationship between the woman and Her God, congratulations, you agree with Planned Parenthood of Idaho.
I have obtained materials from a confidential source that Planned Parenthood of Idaho hands out to religious clients. If you’ve never seen, “I personally have a firm belief in God. It is my belief that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins approximately 2,000 years ago and that He will come again” in a handout from your doctor, you’ve never obtained an abortion at Planned Parenthood in Idaho in a situation where they believe you to be religious.
Planned Parenthood’s materials pay lip service to women’s consciences. “A woman should listen to her conscience and choose that option which she feels is the right moral decision for her. If she has much doubt about what she should do, I feel she should not do anything.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean the folks at Planned Parenthood won’t try and change that conscience. Women are also handed a four page article on abortion and morality. The article is written by Dr. Duane St. Clair, MD, a local abortionist who provides his non-biased commentary on scripture and matters of conception using standard pro-choice theological arguments. While I missed the Divinity Degree after his name, I’m certain it was an omission, as I’m sure the doctor would not speak outside of his area of trained specialty.
I’ll address Dr. St. Clair’s arguments in a future post. In a larger sense, what he says is actually quite irrelevant. Whether or not you agree with these arguments doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they’re being handed out to religious women who are in a crisis pregnancy.
If one were to be extremely kind, you could say that they are designed to make women “more comfortable” with the abortion decision. But this is not the job of the medical practitioner or a medical office.
If there is discomfort and doubts, it is not the job of the practitioner to give the woman theological arguments to explain why it’s okay, but to follow their own policy and discourage a woman from continuing with a procedure she’s uncertain of.
Instead, handing out this pamphlet amounts to trying to sell the woman on abortion. In the terminology of the sales world, this piece is being used to “overcome an objection.”
The problem is that legitimate medicine does not engage in salesmanship of a procedure, particularly one as life-altering as abortion. But with declining abortion rates, economics come into play. Less women getting abortions means less money for doctors, which means less doctors willing to perform the procedure.
Meanwhile, it’s women who will pay the price years down the road, as many realize the guilt and pain in their heart will not be salved by empty philosophizing. It is then that pregnancy centers come and pick up the pieces with post-abortion counseling. Were these abortion clinics more concerned with the patient’s long-term health rather than the clinic’s short-term pocketbook, it would save many women years of suffering.
Click here to read Part Two.
