ACCESS BY MARK CRUTCHER |
2 REASONS In the years preceding and immediately following the Roe vs. Wade decision, the abortion industry justified abortion on the basis that the unborn is not a human being and, therefore, abortion is not murder. But as new technology started to show the reality of the unborn, that argument began to fall on its face. Abortion advocates were then forced to change strategies and argue that whether the unborn was a human being or not, and whether abortion was murder or not, should be left to the individual contemplating the act, They stopped even trying to defend abortion itself, and simply asserted that the issue is "choice." This strategy has evolved to the point that, today, many abortion advocates will openly concede that the unborn is human, with some even going so far as to admit that abortion is murder. More importantly, it has allowed the majority of Americans to simultaneously believe that abortion Is the murder of a child and that it should be legal. Meanwhile, the pro-life community did not do a very good job of responding to the "choice" strategy. In their defense, I have always believed that one reason our side dropped the ball on this issue was that we overestimated the American people. We apparently didn’t believe it was possible for them to actually buy into any belief system that was this irrational, this asinine, and this evil. But unfortunately, they did and the result is that the "choice" argument has devastated the pro-life effort. The problem is that we are trying to sell a viewpoint that’s based solely on the concepts of right and wrong to a nation in which the church refuses to teach that those concepts matter. In such a Godless environment, issues based solely on morality stand little chance. While the American people know that abortion is the brutal killing of a helpless child, without a moral compass to direct them they have no mechanism with which to care. You have to give the pro-aborts credit. Long before we picked up on it, they figured out that the contemporary American church no longer has either the character or the courage required to take a stand on any moral issue. By all rights, the prospect of going up against over 400,000 American churches should have scared them right off the battlefield. But as any leader knows, the size of your opposition is irrelevant if they aren’t willing to fight. It’s like an old saying we have in Texas: It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters. It’s the size of the fight in the dog. In this case, 400,000 churches didn’t frighten the pro-aborts because they assumed that those churches were being led by 400,000 cowards who would cut and run the first chance they got. They assumed that the church was a big dog with no fight in it. In fact, they were so convinced of this assumption that they based their entire political strategy around it. Of course, we now know that they were right in both their assumption and their strategy. Since the day this battle began, it is undeniable that the abortion industry’s single biggest asset has been the church’s willingness to abdicate its responsibilities. In effect, the pro-aborts have put the church’s cowardice into their bank accounts. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the "choice" issue-the very issue upon which the abortion Industry has staked its future-is now turning on its master. It’s similar to an observation Winston Churchill once made: "Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry." That describes the situation in which abortion advocates now find themselves. In the last few years, they have been happily riding about on the back of a tiger named Choice. But it seems to have never occurred to these people that just as women can choose to have an abortion, doctors can choose not to perform them. As Chapter I shows, that is precisely what is happening today. In what could turn out to be a beautiful irony, the abortion, industry has lived by "choice" and it may soon die by it. The tiger is ready to eat. When publicly asked why physicians are not willing to perform abortions, pro-aborts will invariably regurgitate the old shop-worn party line about violence against abortion clinics and the doctors who work in them. To a degree they are correct. It is, after all, reasonable to assume that anytime someone thinks that engaging in a certain activity might get him shot, he is probably less likely to participate in that activity. However, if one looks more closely at the real reasons for the abortionist shortage, it becomes clear that the fear of violence is not the whole story. In fact, it appears to not even be the central issue. It is no secret that the medical community has always been image driven. Both internally and externally, the practice of medicine is seen as one of prestige and integrity. Unfortunately for the abortion industry, being an abortionist is simply not consistent with that image. If you survey 100,000 physicians regarding their political positions on abortion, you’ll get 100,000 different opinions. But ask that same group what they think about abortionists, and there will be virtual unanimity. Even the most hard-core abortion advocate knows that abortionists are the losers and washouts of medicine. While few may publicly admit it, they all realize that no one goes through the ordeal of medical school, internship, and residency to be known as an abortionist. Legalizing abortion may have kept a lot of abortionists from going to jail, but it didn’t - indeed can’t - alter the fact that they are seen as the scum of the medical community. That is the primary reason why there is such a wide disparity between the number of people in the medical community who label themselves "pro-choice" and the number of people in the medical community who are willing to work in an abortion clinic. Contrary to the abortion industry’s chronic bedwetting about "pro-life violence," it is stigma that drives the access issue. The abortion industry’s "vision" of being able to mainstream their child-killing into legitimate medicine has proven to be less a vision than a hallucination. In my book, Lime 5, 1 asserted that abortion is the red-light district of medicine because of the many analogies between abortion and prostitution. I won’t go into all of them here, but one of them is obviously relevant to the question of access. Let’s say that today the Supreme Court issued a ruling which invalidated all state laws against prostitution and said that any future attempts to prohibit or restrict the sale of sex would be summarily dismissed as unconstitutional. Now let’s move forward a year. By this time, there’s a legal brothel on every street corner, Planned Parenthood has gotten its pro-prostitution "education" into the public school system, government funds are being used to buy sex for men who are either too broke or too ugly to get it on their own, and federal marshals are stationed outside brothel entrances to shoo away those pesky protesters. (I could go on, but you get the point.) The question is whether these measures would substantially increase the number of people willing to work in the sex business. The answer is that, for a while, they probably would. Eventually, though, everyone involved would come to realize that the legalization of prostitution did not and cannot-change the fact that people involved in the sex industry are the washouts and losers of society. Regardless of its legal status, prostitution does not attract people who, since childhood, always wanted to sell and degrade their bodies for money, because such people don’t exist, Experience shows that the sex trade-whether legal or not tends to be a sanctuary for people who couldn’t make it in real life. This same dynamic impacts the abortion industry. Immediately after legalization, the number of abortionists began to rise sometimes dramatically. But as it became increasingly obvious that legalization did not change the fact that people who deal in abortion are the whores and pimps of medicine, the numbers started back down. just as no child aspires to become a prostitute, no medical student or legitimate physician aspires to become an abortionist. By the early 1990s, this phenomenon had taken a dramatic toll on the abortion industry. A look at the histories of abortionists currently working at abortion clinics reveals that the overwhelming majority aren’t people who always wanted to be abortionists, but people who couldn’t make it In real medicine. Like prostitution, abortion is not proving to be something which winners choose, but something to which losers are relegated. This seems to have caught many in the abortion industry by surprise. In the early years of the struggle, they appeared to honestly-if naively-believe that if they kissed this frog long enough it would turn into a prince. Of course, this never happened. Today they appear resigned to failure in the effort to create their prince, but lacking alternatives, they keep right on puckering up. In Chapter 1, abortion advocates and the media told us that access is our key to victory. Now listen as they tell us why. ABORTION INDUSTRY OBSERVATIONS "Abortion has failed to escape its back-alley associations ... [it is the] dark side of medicine ... Even when abortion became legal, it was still considered dirty." Morris Wortman, Abortionist "In obstetrics and gynecology, the term abortionist Is still a dirty word." Joe Thompson, retired Abortionist "Doctors today see abortion as a mud puddle not worth jumping into." Jean Hunt, Former Executive Director ‘[Abortion is] a nasty, dirty, yukky thing and I always come home angry." David Zbaraz, Abortionist "[An abortionist is treated] like a second-class citzen ... You look around and think, why put up with this?" Robert Crist, Abortionist "I guess I never realized I would find [performing abortions] as unpleasant as I do. I really don’t enjoy it at all. It’s not a rewarding thing to do ... [patients] look at you as an evil person who is deliberately putting them through a painful procedure ... it’s their whole attitude that bothers me. I feel like a simple thank you Is In order, instead of, ‘Why are you doing this to me?"’ Unidentified New York Abortionist "It’s true that abortion providers are perceived as not very good doctors - that they have no alternative so they do abortions, that they cannot earn a living any other way." Richard Hausknecht, Abortionist "[Doing abortions] can make you feel bad ... No matter how pro-choice you are, it makes you feel low -" Unidentified New York Abortionist, "[Abortion] is a difficult field from an emotional aspect. Some of us, and all of us, I suspect, to some degree or another, have emotional Isolation and separation and distance from some of our social friends, certainly from the community, and from our professional colleagues." George Tiller, Abortionist
National Abortion "Most physicians regard abortion as a stigmatized operation done by people who are otherwise Incompetent and can’t do anything else. If you’re going to do abortions and make that your specialty, the best you can hope for is to be tolerated by your colleagues and your community." Warren Hern, Abortionist "A surgeon from this town would be, in effect, tarred and feathered if he were to perform abortions." Ulrich Klopfer, Abortionist, " … abortion Is still a very fringe-type practice. There aren’t a lot of people who want to get into abortion provision ... And the ones that we do have applying to us for training often have very dodgy histories and backgrounds. And if you dig deep enough, you’ll find a death or two or a malpractice suit or a de-registration somewhere along the line. It’s very difficult to get good doctors that are committed and want to get involved in abortion provision." Dr. David Grundmann, Australian
Abortionist, National Abortion federation Risk Management Seminar, ‘A lot of doctors don’t want partners who perform [abortions] ... I’m not going to keep doing this until I have one foot in the grave ... I’m not going to do this forever." Unidentified North Dakota
Abortionist "They do abortions, they don’t do real medicine." The Hartfbrd Advocate, April
15, 1993 "I observed during my medical training as an Australian physician many abortions by experienced practitioners. They experienced, without exception, physical revulsion and moral bewilderment." Dr. Susan Conde "[Abortion is] the dirty work of our field. The sad truth is that the people who moonlight at the clinics are grade-B doctors. They’re not the cream of the crop. And it’s not because they’re committed. It’s because they can’t find steady work." Unidentified Pro-abortion
OBIGYN "[Among abortionists], we’ve had guys drinking too much, taking drugs, even a suicide or two ... There have been no studies I know of about the problem, but the unwritten kind of statistics we see are alarming." "[Pro-abortion author] Carole Joffe argues that the marginal status of abortion provision occurred long before the anti-abortion movement took to violence... private practitioners were fearful of being associated with such a stigmatized activity." Choice Notes. Summer 1996 "… there’s a physician whose name is Frank ... and the anti’s are putting out a ‘Wanted’ poster. It has his picture on it ... home address, home phone, girlfriend A lives at ... mistress B lives at ... many personal things, finances, possessions, all of this stuff was on there ... You obviously know that these are the worst, most horrible people on earth. You got to be strong! [Frank’s still doing abortions] but for how long we don’t know. He Is wavering and I … I don’t know." Ralph Bundy, Abortionist National
Abortion " … status of [abortionists] is somewhere well below the average garage mechanic ... patients do not value what we do." Warren Hern, Abortionist National
Abortion "All providers are on the battle lines, on the front lines ... and we are feeling so isolated, and so alone, and so vulnerable. And I lock the door and walk out at night and think maybe I just won’t go back tomorrow. It’s just not worth It. Maybe I just won’t go back." Unidentifled Abortion Clinic
Director MEDIA OBSERVATIONS "This shadow world [of abortion] makes the providing of abortions less and less appealing even to those doctors who consider themselves ‘pro-choice’ ... The passage of Roe v. Wade did not erase a medical history in which ‘abortionist’ was an Insult worse than ‘quack.'" The New York Times Magazine. January 18, 1998 "Some [abortionists] have said they quit because of intimidation, others said they felt too Isolated from mainstream medicine, others said the stigma had become overwhelming." St. Petersburg Times, June 3, 1990 "[The abortionist who took slain abortionist David Gunn’s place] said working in abortion clinics has made him an outcast among physicians and denied him a life with a house and a white picket fence and a wife and three children.’ He lives alone, he said, ‘thrown into a war zone,’ and he ‘drinks beer at night to ease the pain."’ The Washington Post, May 7, 1993 "[Hospital administrators say] abortion is a sleazy and offensive procedure ... A doctor who does abortions-even if they are only a small part of her practice-is known as an abortionist ... This label is the kiss of death for any professional hopes a doctor might have." Glamour, October 1993 (reactions
to a 1985 "At Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, fully half the fourth-year students reported they wouldn’t perform [abortions] ... Many fear losing patients who will not patronize a doctor who performs abortions." The New York Times. March 22. 1992 "[Doctors] regard abortions as boring and repetitive procedures that use up time they would prefer to devote to more interesting and challenging cases." The Philadelphia Inquirer. July 18, 1993 "The reasons for the shortage [of abortionists] are many. Abortion supporters and opponents, as well as doctors, point to the stigma within the medical profession [and] the perception of abortion as an unrewarding field of medicine." McClatchy News Service, March 1, 1993 "Many doctors also complain that abortion is viewed as a lower-status procedure for physicians." The New Physcian, December 1991 "Under siege from protesters and largely Isolated from medical colleagues, doctors who perform abortions say they are being heavily stigmatized, and fewer and fewer are willing to enter the field." The New York Times News Service, January 21, 1990 "[Abortionists] dwell in relative Isolation ... The medical establishment has been scared off, leaving the practical day-to-day work of abortion overwhelmingly to the same doctors who first pioneered it 25 years ago." The New York Times Magazine, January 18, 1998 "Some hospitals and clinics that provide abortions have been refused service by laundries, pharmacies, cleaning businesses, etc." The Revolutionary Worker, July 5, 1992 ‘[Abortionist Ed Boaz] moved out of his clinic because his landlord no longer wanted an abortion provider as a tenant." ABC World News Tonight, January 16, 1998 "The local manager of the Holiday Inn Isn’t really eager to arrange the plastic letters on the roadside sign to read, ‘Welcome Abortion Providers."’ The New York Times Magazine, January 18, 1998 "A perception endures today that abortion is provided by ‘abortionists’ rather than physicians." Journal of Nurse-Midwifery, September/October 1994 "No one ever says thank you to an abortionist." The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 18, 1993 |
