sdb@tekecs.UUCP (07/21/83)
Liz mentioned that all the doctors who appeared before the Senate Judiciary committee in April 1981 were prolife. Boy, those pro-choice doctors must have been too busy slaughtering infants to show up, right? In fact, the witness list was generated by rabid anti-abortionists, and every pro-choice doctor who tried to get on was not allowed to, though several tried. The witness list was SO biased, that the report was rejected by the full senate. Just thought I would let you know...
liz@umcp-cs.UUCP (07/22/83)
My source indicated that there had been an oportunity for pro-choice doctors to appear and testify that life began at some other time but that none were found to do so. There was at least on pro-choice senator on the committee, but the only witness he found to testify that life did not start at conception was not a doctor and would only testify that it was a theological or meta-physical question. It turns out that later, one of the medical associations (The American Medical Assn?) did pass a resolution stating that the question of life beginning was a theological or meta-physical question. If I have time, I'll check my source, etc, a little more carefully. It is true that the resolution failed to pass in the full Senate -- I don't know why. I didn't mean to imply that the pro-choice doctors were too busy in the abortion clinics to testify -- I just thought that it meant that they could not honestly give another point in time for human life to begin. Viablity, for instance, depends greatly on what medical support is given and premature infants are able to survive earlier and earlier as medical science advances. And, if they said that human life did begin then, that would imply that abortions should not be done after a certain point in the pregnancy. (Actually, in my area here, it is almost impossible to get an abortion after about the 18th to 20th week of pregnancy because the doctors want to avoid "accidental" live births. But I think that this area is unusual.) In any case, the long standing and traditional view to the beginning of life has always been that life begins at conception. This is evidenced by both the doctor (whom I quoted) who stated that all his text books taught this and by the California Medicine editorial (that I also quoted) which stated that the fact was deliberately being ignored by proponents of the new ethic and which was not pro-life... -- -Liz Allen ...!seismo!umcp-cs!liz (Usenet) liz.umcp-cs@Udel-Relay (Arpanet)