It basically raises the point that abortion is limited because many medical students aren’t given the proper training and tools to perform it. Towards the end, it the question of should pro-life med students have to learn about performing abortions come up. On the one hand, one might argue that one’s ethics should be respected. However, it’s also important to recognize abortion as a regular procedure, and that many other procedures (the example given in the article is that of a below the knee amputation) are distasteful, but that’s part of being a doctor. One has to have a certain knowledge base, in spite of personal objections, and because abortion is so common means that it should be part of this base.
I personally think that it should be required knowledge. To allow med students to just opt out puts a moral stigma on it, as is mentioned in the article. I don’t think that any type of surgical procedure should have judgement passed over it, and that being a student doesn’t mean deciding what you can and cannot learn. Plus, having the knowledge of how to perform it doesn’t necessarily mean one will have to actually carry out abortions. It just means that by incorporating it into the curriculum legitimizes abortion and spreads useful information.
The common form of amputations are emergency procedures.
The common form of abortions are elective procedures.
I do not see where your logic holds up except that you wish to push your ideologies upon others who strongly appose that idea in order to promote and “legitimize” it?
Most doctors in emergency medicine or ob/gyn know, I’m sure, how to perform abortions necessary for the health and life of the mother.
Elective abortion is not like other medical procedures, in a lot of ways. It is, for instance, the only procedure in a lot of places a teenaged girl can have without parental consent.
Distasteful? It’s murder in a lot of minds, and forcing doctors to commit it won’t make it any prettier.
I’m pro-choice, and of course medical students should be allowed to opt out of abortion training. They should not be allowed to opt out of learning about the proper procedures to deal with ectopic pregnancies, eclampsia (sp?) and the like, where procedures necessary to preserve the mother’s physical health and/or life may or will result in the abortion of the fetus.
But to require medical students to learn a particular elective procedure is just silliness. Should medical students also be required to learn the proper procedures for botox injections?
It basically raises the point that abortion is limited
Limited?
I have never known of a woman who wanted an abortion and couldn’t get one due to a lack of abortionists running around. Lack of money, yes, or lack of support, but not lack of those willing to do them.
and that many other procedures (the example given in the article is that of a below the knee amputation) are distasteful, but that’s part of being a doctor.
Big difference between an amputation and an abortion.
To allow med students to just opt out puts a moral stigma on it, as is mentioned in the article.
A moral stigma? Oh my! We can’t have people thinking that abortion is wrong!!! It might hurt somebody’s feelings!
If you claim to be pro-choice, and I assume you do, how can you say that you support students being FORCED to do abortions? (A student would have to do at LEAST one in order to be considered learned, probably more, I think.) Why use the term “pro-choice” when you don’t want doctors to be able to choose whether or not they are involved in one?
What would it profit an ear, nose, and throat doctor do know how to do an abortion? An optometrist? Cardiologist?
Considering the Hippocratic Oath (which yes, I know is not required of doctors but many still take it) mentions not doing any harm to a patient, I fail to see how learning how to perform abortions would fit in with doing no harm.
It should be up to the medical school. The school may not want a reputation of producing “ignorant doctors” that cannot perform an abortion, or it may not care.
For example, if a medical school started making CPR optional, the school might develop a reputation of being sub-par because some of its students graduate without knowing CPR. Abortion is obviously very different from CPR so the school may not care if it develops a reputation for producing doctors that do not necessarily know how to perform an abortion.
So I leave it up to the school to choose whether it is optional or mandatory. If a person does not want to be forced to learn the abortion procedure, he/she can avoid applying to any school that has it as required learning.
I don’t know what medical training entails, but aren’t medical students often required to learn by seeing/doing? I mean, you can run a med student through a textbook and simulations, but there needs to be hands-on experience in order to get a procedure right.
…which, of course, would be crossing the lines of too many med students. Speaking as a pro-life Catholic, I could still see the value of learning how abortion is done if I were a med. student; I’d hope such a class would have opportunities for abortion alternatives as well. (Imagine this scenario: you’re a doctor treating a patient with a fatal pregnancy. She’s devoutly pro-life and refuses to have an abortion. Absent knocking her unconscious, can you find a way to save her life without overcoming her wishes?) The danger, as I’ve suggested, is that it would force med students opposed to abortion to become complicit in one either by witnessing a live one or actually participating in one. You’re going to end up with students dropping out of med school rather than go through with that.
And this is getting off-topic, but what happens if hypotetically, every med student (or physician, for that matter) becomes pro-life, or at least chooses not to get involved in abortion? (I don’t have a cite handy, but I understand that most physicians who perform abortions are aging, and they aren’t being replaced fast enough.) Would the state have to require physicians to perform abortions in order to meet demand? Legally, I doubt that’s possible. You might have a 13th Amendment problem (I’m not up on my 13th Amendment, but maybe Sua or somebody else can elaborate), but there’s also Supreme Court cases where the court said that the state isn’t required to fund abortions: it’s allowed to have its preference and is only not allowed to block abortions. By extension, you’d have a strong argument that physicians would be left to their choice as well.
WV: I learned how to kill someone when in Basic Training. Yet I’ve never killed anyone in my life. The Army considered me learned. I hope you’re able to see this analogy.
Otherwise: In short, your assertion has no basis in reality.
VW_Woman, you’ll probably be happy to know that in the large majority of counties in this country, there are no abortion services available.
It’s WV, thanks.
Why would you want an abortion clinic in every single county?? Most counties are not big enough, population wise, to financially support a clinic, for one thing. Secondly, am I to assume that you feel that women should barely have to lift a finger to go get one? What is the maximum number of miles a woman should have to drive to have access to an abortion? 5? 10? 25? 50? (Where I live, as far as I know, the nearest clinic is about a 45 minute drive, hardly what I would consider excessive.)
If I get some really nutty, undiscovered disease, should I demand that the Mayo Clinic come set up shop in the city I live in so I don’t have to travel for healthcare?
::sigh:: WV_Woman, can’t you be happy about something?
Get the chip off your shoulder. I never said that I wanted an abortion clinic in every county. I was merely stating a fact - 84% of U.S. counties do not have abortion providers.
I’m not saying I think doctors should be forced to perform abortions. Far from it. I just think that it shouldn’t be off on the fringes, considered an unnecessary, or odd thing to have done. There should be an adequate number of doctors able to perform an abortion.
In other words, there should be opportunities to at least learn about it, as opposed to being something considered extra. It is elective, but hardly as frivolous as botox.
Again, no doctor has to work at an abortion clinic or provide one for a patient. You can become a doctor and live your whole life abortion free if you like. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to integrate it as part of what is taught in medical school. I don’t personally know how much a student would have to do before they’re considered officially knowledable on the subject. I don’t know if they’d have to participate in it for example.
As Sua points out, one cannot get an abortion with ease in many areas. Ideally, every woman should be able to. By making an abortion a standard procedure regularly taught, rather than an issue that people are afraid of, perhaps more women will have that freedom of choice.
I don’t know if they’d have to participate in it for example.
How could they possibly be considered competent in doing abortions if they have simply watched someone else do one?
That is absolute malpractice … and for someone who seems to want abortion to be “safe,” it should follow that students would have to do not one, not two, but probably several abortions before it could be safe to say that they know what they’re doing.
If I am going to have a surgery of any kind, I want a doctor who has performed that surgery a LOT … the more the better. You wouldn’t go to a cardiologist who had just “watched” a few bypasses, so why would we want doctors running around who are allowed to do abortions, simply by virtue of having watched a few during med school?
WV_Woman
“You wouldn’t go to a cardiologist who had just “watched” a few bypasses, so why would we want doctors running around who are allowed to do abortions, simply by virtue of having watched a few during med school?”
Sheesh. Thats what interning is for. Do you think the med students help out on the triple bypass?
Medical abortions can be required in emergency situations. Spontaneous abortions (‘miscarriages’ in, I believe, the first trimester) can be incomplete and require medical intervention.
Of course all ob-gyn’s should be trained in the procedures.
Actually, most medical amputations are planned rather than emergency procedures in this country.
Guess what? OB-Gyns not only have the right to choose whether or not they do abortions, they do not legally even have to give a woman a referral to an abortion clinic.
Choice works both ways, people.
And j66, if a woman has already miscarried, how could it even be considered an abortion if an OB gives her a D&C?
ALL OBs know how to do D&Cs because while a D&C is used for early abortions, it is not exclusively an abortion procedure. It’s used for other things as well.
Ah hell, you expect all medical students (as the OP stated) , or even all ob-gyn’s, to expect to know every procedure because it can be required in an emergency situation? The OP’s issue was on the commonality of it. And that is why we do have specialists, because emergency situations can require them. And until you show some evidence that women are commonly being hamred because all ob-gyn’s do not know the procedure, don’t give me that hyperbole just to “legitimize” something most people dissagree on fundamentally anyways.
Cite please? And although they may be “planned”, They are usually not elective in any sense of the word except maybe the risk of dying or losing a larger part of the body.
An abortion is a pregnancy terminated naturally (called ‘spontaneous’) or medically (called ‘medical’) in, I belive, the first trimester of the pregnancy (I could be mistaken about the time frame). A miscarriage is a pregnancy that terminates later. So, a spontaneous incomplete abortion may require a D&C to remove non-expelled tissue from the uterus.
These are medical procedures which, for the most part, have use beyond the voluntary termination of a viable pregnancy.
Removal of non-expelled tissue from a spontaneous abortion or miscarriage.
Removal of a fetus that has died in utero.
Termination of a pregnancy with a fetus which absolutely will not survive ex utero (there are such cases).
These are medical procedures; the uses to which the doctors will put them are the doctors’ decisions, but thr doctors should be trained in them.