Guest Editorial: Abortion in America – remember when … ?

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

By Dr. Warren M. Hern

Grace Hammond’s excellent report on decreasing numbers of physicians who perform abortions in the West (PJH, July 30) should cause alarm among not only women but all citizens. It should concern women because it has only been during the past 40 years that women anywhere in the world could obtain safe, legal abortions. That is the first time in 3 million years of human evolutionary experience that this has been possible. We will now enter a time when it will no longer be possible for women to have safe, legal abortions.

All those who are involved with women should be concerned about this, because the women in their lives will start dying from illegal and unsafe abortions as they did a century ago.

The second cause for alarm that should concern all citizens is what this trend means for our society in general. The national suppression of abortion services and oppression of those involved in this activity represents the overwhelming success of the radical political and religious right in its continuing effort to transform American society into a fascist theocracy. The anti-abortion movement is the face of fascism in America, and it has made symbiotic cause with the fascist elements in the Republican Party. This repressive, totalitarian ideology now dominates American politics, government and much of our society. The principal symbolic leader and puppet occupies the White House, and he is surrounded by puppeteers and fascist ideologues such as Wyoming’s own Vice President Dick Cheney - Daddy Warbucks himself.

Access by women to safe abortion is one of the hidden casualties of this drift to a totalitarian, theocratic state. The personal tragedies and lives of the women who suffer, have suffered, and will suffer as the consequence of their political ruthlessness is of no consequence to the leaders of, say, the Republican Party, for whom the abortion issue has been simply their hammer and tongs to power since 1974.

The declining number of physicians willing to perform abortions and their increasing scarcity is due to a number of complicated factors. One is the increasing social stigmatization of doctors who perform abortions, especially those who specialize in this surgical procedure. It is an activity that is disvalued even among doctors, many of whom do not appreciate the tediousness of procedure and technique that is necessary to assure a consistently safe result.

Anti-abortion violence toward physicians and clinics, culminating in the political assassination of several physicians between 1993 and 1998, revealed the fact that the antiabortion fanatics will stop at nothing to impose their will on the rest of us. Psychological permission for this violence was given generously by many national leaders in the Republican Party and the religious fundamentalist movement. The result was domestic terrorism. The decline in the number of physicians willing to perform abortions is a direct consequence of this.

Doctors want social status and appreciation more than money. The social status of physicians both within the medical profession and in society has an inverse relationship to their performance of abortions. And then there’s money. That’s the way we value things in this society. This is how we say what is important. How much do professional athletes get paid?

In 1938, the average fee for a first-trimester abortion was $300. In 1972, in Washington, D.C., the fee was $300. The national average is now less than $300.
The pro-choice movement has spent 35 years convincing everyone that what we do is worth nothing. Abortions were free in the 19th century. Women died. They will again.

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Guest Editorial: Abortion in America – remember when … ? | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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