The original Hippocratic Oath states in part, “…I will not give a woman an abortive remedy.”
The purpose of medicine is to heal and maintain the health of the patient. Abortion does neither one of those two things for either the woman or the child. Since the dawn of western medicine abortion was rejected as quackery. What changed? “Medicine has lost her soul,” said one to the father of modern medical ethics, Dr. Edmund Pellegrino. After staring intently across the table, Dr. Pellegrino replied, “I agree.” The Hippocratic tradition is being sacrificed on the altar of patient autonomy, where the quality of reproductive health care is measured by the vulgar standard of a vending machine.
When a patient entrusts herself to a physician, it is only medical ethics that insulate her best interests from being subordinated to a political agenda or the pocket book of an abortionist.
In the absence of ethics courses in today’s medical schools, this book reframes women’s reproductive health in the context of traditional western Hippocratic medicine for the good of women and for the good of the profession.
