Peter EspeutI WAS interested to read in last Thursday's Gleaner that certain medical doctors, who if convicted under present legislation can be sentenced to life imprisonment with or without hard labour for performing abortions, want the government to decriminalise the currently illegal activities. At the same time there is a move to legalise the currently illegal profession of prostitution. It would appear that for the moment, the doctors and the prostitutes are in the same bed.
At present abortion is illegal under the 'Offences against the Person Act' because abortion is an offence against the unborn child whom the law determines to be a human person with the inalienable right to life. When a pregnant woman is in front of a physician, he has two patients both the mother and the child in her womb and the doctor is obliged to see to the welfare of both. Just because it is the woman who pays the cash does not mean the doctor can favour her over her defenceless child. I refer you to the concept of the 'hit man', someone that is paid by one person to kill another.
HIPPOCRATIC OATH
Does that apply here? It used to be that before you could practice medicine you had to swear the Hippocratic Oath. I don't know if the profession has abandoned that practice, but I went and looked up the words, and the Hippocratic Oath says, inter alia: "I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and
mischievous.
"I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion."
The ethical foundation of the medical profession (not derived from Christianity but from paganism) is pro-life: the doctor is sworn to preserve life, not to take it: therefore no euthanasia, no assisted suicide, and no abortion. What the doctors quoted in The Gleaner want to do is to change the ethical foundation of the medical profession. Or rather, they are asking the government to give them authority over life and death. They already have the power to take life; they have been illegally using it for decades, and making a lot of money in the process. Now they want the government to make their illegal money-making activities legal.
The Gleaner front page story last Thursday reported that the medical fraternity wants Jamaican legislators to develop a law that will permit a doctor to terminate a pregnancy "for social and economic reasons" (column 4). What does this really mean? The doctors want the power over life and death, not for medical reasons but "for social and economic reasons". The doctors not only want to play sociologist and economist; they want to be able to play God, to decide whether a perfectly healthy child is born or whether they may kill it.
DISGRACE
Such a scheme is worthy of Nazi Germany, but not of 21st century Jamaica. I don't believe that anyone should have that power. This suggestion by the medical fraternity to allow doctors to kill unborn children for no reason other than because the mother is poor, is reprehensible and brings disgrace upon their profession. They should be ashamed of themselves!
If "social and economic reasons" is an adequate reason to kill healthy unborn children in the womb, why not use that principle to justify doing away with healthy teenagers and adults who live in the ghetto and who might turn out to be gunmen and criminals? Why not empower well, it wouldn't be doctors; it would be, let us say, the police to go into the ghettos and wipe out with impunity what am I saying? Maybe this principle is already being applied! And the doctors just want equal authority.
The Gleaner front page story also quotes the doctors as wanting to be allowed to kill "when the unborn child has medical problems or birth defects" (column 4). What a principle! Why don't we do the same for teenagers and adults?
We wouldn't need Bellevue Hospital, and the cost to the state of medical care would be dramatically reduced. But what authority to play God the doctors want to have! I hope there are some in the medical fraternity who do not support the request made in their name; and I encourage them to speak up and let us know that there is still some spirit of Hippocrates left. If abortion and euthanasia are what Christian doctors want, give me the pagan ones anytime!
Rev. Peter Espeut is a
sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon.
