"an abortion saved my life."

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You can assess the likelihood of being put in such a situation prior to enlisting. If you join the US military, for example... You should have a reasonable expectation of being required to kill civilians. Seems like that's a big part of what they do.

I would assume there's also a reasonable expectation if you are the go-to-guy at a place where pregnant women are liable to show up in emergency situations, that you might have to make a hard choice at some point.

I've always supported abortion. It was difficult because my mother was against it, so we had HUGE fights. She always told me when I grew up and had a child I would change my mind. I did and I still support abortion. That doctor should be prosecuted. No matter what he thinks about abortion, it is his duty as a doctor to safe his patience's life.

Of course you do. No one at all affected with a reverence and love for children would oppose abortion.

I agree that he should be prosecuted- he swore an oath not subjective or arbitrary, but LEGALLY-BINDING.

Sorry, but no. No one is required to kill civilians. Civilians sometimes die in cross-fires but all efforts can, should be and generally are taken to avoid them. If I thought a civilian could be injured, I would not fire and LOAC would support my decision.



I agree with what psychohist said, I think this is a case of us not having the full information. Hence, I am weary of desires to armchair quaterback these situations and in general I give the benefit of the doubt to the doctor's conscience.



'I was only following orders' is not a valid legal defense for a solider. This is the sort of comment only someone who had not served would make. While I cannot speak for US basic training, in Aus we get serious LOAC training pretty much from the moment we sign up. Soldiers are not required to follow illegal orders and if there is doubt, the green machine tends to side with the judgement made by the trooper on the ground.

Are you really equating women getting an abortion with soldiers killing civilians?

Consider, even if abortion was the slaughter of a human being (and there is little reason to think it is). It would still not qualify as murder or anything high on the list, specially not soldiers mass killing civilians.

Sounds like the question one gets from the political commissar. We are discussing people conscientiously objecting.

It most certainly is!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Orders

Moreover, if soldiers swore a legally-binding oath specifically requiring them to kill civilians and refused to do exactly that, they would very well be subject to legal consequences.


All of what militaries do are illegal, the only difference being WHO commits those acts,
militaries being state and corporation-financed institutions of killing
as opposed to the lone crazed individual in his basement with an AK who makes the nightly news.

That "conscientiously objecting" involving so called 'doctors' refusing to uphold their oath to STABILIZE INDIVIDUALS NEEDING EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT.

^^^^^^

And we don't know more than that about the doctor. He could easily be just as incompetent/neglectful and be pro-choice.

Last edited by Natty_Boh on 31 May 2011, 8:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

dionysian -

just for the record, practically speaking there is no "oath". Physicians used to do the Oath of Hippocrates thing, with about as much relevance as wearing a tie or tossing youyr cap in the air.
It had you swear [when nobody believes in oaths] by gods not even theistic doctors adhere to, to do and avoid things that n doctor will really go along with. Share your goods with the medical school? Eschew surgery and abortion? Come on.

This is at the level of the Mafia boss in court swearing by Got to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is the wig on the British judge.

I understand that these days a lot of medical schools have replaced it with a wishy washy but more up to date affirmation about as meaninful as the "we will try to get you somewhere" fine print contract that used to be on the back of airline tickets.

This isn't a story about an abortion. It's a story about a miscarriage.

From your link:

"It was during these trials, under the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal which set them up, that the defense of "Superior Orders" was no longer considered enough to escape punishment; but merely enough to lessen punishment."

Your link directly contradicts your position and supports that of 91. Some advice: it's always a good idea actually to read your sources before citing them.

The claim was that there was a "miscommunication". We don't know what that miscommunication was. It's quite possible that the on call doctor paged the later term abortion doctor, possibly repeatedly, and the later term abortion doctor simply wasn't wearing her pager. If they weren't personal friends, the on call doctor might not have had the later term abortion doctor's personal cell phone number or whatever phone number could actually reach her - or the later term abortion doctor might have been ignoring the calls, but taking the call from the nurse who got through because they knew each other.

I don't think people in this thread realize just how unusual an abortion at 20 weeks is. At one point we had an amniocentesis to diagnose for Down's because of a positive screening test. There was a huge amount of urgency to get the amnio quickly, even though there was only a 1 in 100 chance of a positive, because it looked like we would have to go out of state to get an abortion past week 13. This was in Massachusetts, where practically no one has any problems with abortions - certainly our doctors didn't. The procedure is completely different - a fetus at 20 weeks is 10 times bigger than at 12 weeks; you can't just scrape it out with a speculum any more. And if the woman has already had a placental abruption, that makes things even tougher, because you don't have the time to dilate the vagina using the normal methods, and cutting her open involves even more loss of blood.

I don't think that the crew the author complains about was antiabortion. The question she got, "was this a planned pregnancy", is not one that "pro-life" folks normally ask. What the intern was mostly likely thinking was, 'given the history of this pregnancy, why the hell didn't you get an abortion two months ago, when we could have done it safely?' If you read between the lines about the woman's 'discussing an abortion with her husband' early on, it seems likely that her doctor was already recommending an abortion, and it was the woman herself, or her husband, that didn't want to get an abortion.

If the woman had died, the primary fault would have been with the woman herself, for not taking the safe choice of an earlier abortion when it was available. The article looks suspiciously like an attempt to shift the blame to anyone but the person who deserves it most - the author herself.

Wow, just wow. The woman and her family wanted to keep the baby. There was a chance that she'd be able to maintain the pregnancy and that the baby would be OK. She took that chance under the care of her physician. She stayed on bed rest and sought treatment when needed. But, somehow it's her fault she was left alone to bleed nearly to death?! You must be joking.

Abortions at 20 weeks may not be common, but high risk pregnancies are. Underlying conditions, multiples, sudden illness and injury, placenta previa, etc. Are you suggesting that all woman with high risk pregnancies get abortions immediately?

I do think, as you and some of the other posters have pointed out, that there is a bit more to this story. It's been my experience that woman are simply not taken very seriously in medical or emergency circumstances. I've been pregnant 7 times (2 kids, 5 miscarriages) and I was more often than not dismissed whenever I spoke of pains or concerns. During bleeding I would hear, "Just keep your feet up, you'll be fine." I was, my babies were not. During my last labor, I rushed to the hospital in a lot of pain. They knew I was scheduled for a c-section. They knew I was in pre-term labor just a few weeks prior at the same hospital and yet they still didn't believe me when I said that the baby was on it's way out. Thankfully, the natural delivery turned out OK, but you can imagine just how badly I wanted to punch the anesthesiologist when he showed up 20 minutes after my baby was born.

Then you haven't been paying a lot of attention. I don't know a single pro-lifer in person who believes an exception should be made when there is a threat to the mother's life.


Ridiculous. If you are a physician, there is an obligation to provide emergency life-saving care. If he lacked the adequate training more vigorous efforts should be made to find someone who was trained, though I am suspicious of a hospital ward that deals with pregnant women not having anyone on call who can deal with a problem their patients might have. That would not be considered acceptable for any other necessary procedure.

I am suggesting they take responsibility for their own decisions. High risk pregnancies are called "high risk" for a reason, and part of that reason is risk to the mother. If they want to take those risks, that's fine with me, but then they should not go around blaming others when those risks materialize into reality.