Doctors in Spain plan to choose jail before performing an abortion

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dreama

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Madrid, Spain, Aug 20, 2009 / 01:55 pm (CNA).- Dr. Esteban Rodriguez, spokesman for the organization Right to Life (Derecho a Vivir) in Spain, responded yesterday to comments by the country’s Minister of Justice, Francisco Caamano, who said there was no room for a conscience clause in the new law on abortion.

“We are willing to go to jail rather than following a criminal law, Rodriguez said, “and we are willing to commit the supposed crime of disobedience before the crime of abortion.”

“We will not kill our patients, nor will we commit a crime against the public health deliberately harming the heath of women, no matter how much the Minister of Justice threatens us and abuses his power,” the doctor said.

“We doctors are not soldiers, nor policemen, nor executioners. There is no civil disobedience in the refusal to kill a human being, but rather the fulfilling of our professional obligation,” he added.

If the government carries out the threat by the Minister of Justice to penalize conscientious objectors as disobedient, Rodriguez said that a “new category of victims of the laws on abortion and the regulation of conscience will be created in the gynecologists who wish to carry out their moral obligations in the face of an imposed ideology.”

After recalling that the statute in the Spanish constitution allowing conscientious objection must be respected, Rodriguez expressed his surprise that the law would shield from prison some doctors who have been convicted of performing illegal abortions, while punishing with prison those doctors who have fought to defend the lives of their patients and the health of women.

“We recommend they think about creating a new level of officials at the ministries of Justice and Equality: fetal executioners,” Dr. Rodriguez remarked.

“We find the totalitarian intentions of the Ministry of Justice, in conjunction with those of Equality, to be highly troubling. If the former Minister of Justice stirred things up with officials in the judiciary, this one is going to accomplish the same thing with medical professionals,” he warned.
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Gynecologists in Spain plan to choose jail before performing an abortion
 
That shouldn't come as any big surprise when you stop to think that Spain is overwhelmingly Catholic.
 
Bottesini said:
That shouldn't come as any big surprise when you stop to think that Spain is overwhelmingly Catholic.
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True.

Personally, I think it's sad. I am pro choice, but I think that someone has the right to refuse to perform an abortion if it goes against that person's belief system. The idea of jailing someone who refuses to perform abortion on the basis that they feel abortion is murder is stupid.
 
Oceanbreeze: they are not merely 'someone' they are doctors: and their duty is first to their patient. If they don't like it, to be blunt, there's other jobs.
 
Aleser said:
Oceanbreeze: they are not merely 'someone' they are doctors: and their duty is first to their patient. If they don't like it, to be blunt, there's other jobs.
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That's also a very black&white way to think. Doctors have the right to refuse, imho, and shouldn't be penalized for it.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
That's also a very black&white way to think. Doctors have the right to refuse, imho, and shouldn't be penalized for it.
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Abortion has always been controversial. So you will find doctors who will not perform such a procedure. You can always go to another doctor if you want to get it done.
 
Huh, I m so surprise that comments didn't make any nasty one toward pro-life doctors or pro lifers here.

I was expected those pro-choice comments would say like this...

"OMG! That's so stoopid!"

"Thankfully, doctors are in jails! That is only way to reduce the problem to save women. Woman is more important than this crappy fetus!! Down with pro-life fucktards!!! Go woman power!!!!111one!!!"

"That is why all doctors should perform an abortion whenever they don't like or not. BOO to pro-life doctors. They need to shut up and suck it up."

"LOLZ WUT? Those religious wackos are crazy! They should not say about their stupid beliefs. Abortion is not murder, and those fucktards need to shut the fuck up!!!"

Something like that what I read comments on another forums...

... Well, my opinion, I prefer to choose a jail instead of murdering poor unborn babies... A precious life of human being is more important than my job. I know there're a lot of people don't feel that way, that's fine. If you value your job more than a human being (unborn, disabled, elders, etc etc), then I won't trust you. That is just my POV...

Okay, well, I probably will be flamed for this tiny post... :roll:
 
You can't always find another dr when you live in a small or rural place and you don't have the money to travel. Think: Nebraska or South Dakota

Some pharmacists are refusing to fill rx for emergency contraception. It should be available without a rx in all parts of the US. Some of those who refuse are fired because that's there job (dispensing legal medications).

Don't approve? Don't use contraception, then.
 
sallylou said:
You can't always find another dr when you live in a small or rural place and you don't have the money to travel. Think: Nebraska or South Dakota

Some pharmacists are refusing to fill rx for emergency contraception. It should be available without a rx in all parts of the US. Some of those who refuse are fired because that's there job (dispensing legal medications).

Don't approve? Don't use contraception, then.
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OK. But, the article doesn't mention the United States. This is a law in Spain, where apparently, it's illegal to refuse to perform abortions.
 
I am pro-choice but I dont know enough about the laws in this country. Are the doctors obligated to practice any medical procedures even if it goes against their personal beliefs? :dunno:
 
It's not surprising that Spain has more exemptions. It's a Catholic country.

My girlfriend married a man from Spain and her MIL gives her all kind of grief for not producing a child. She's a nurse and her husband is a trauma surgeon who travel to developing nations to provide medical care. Not exactly a situation in which a baby will fit right in.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
That's also a very black&white way to think. Doctors have the right to refuse, imho, and shouldn't be penalized for it.
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If you are a gay person and show up to an ER, should the doctor be allowed to refuse to save your life because their religion tells them so? NO.

Likewise, who is to say that these doctors may not be the doctors killing a woman because she needs an emergency abortion.. and they wont perform it? There's not always another doctor.
 
Aleser said:
If you are a gay person and show up to an ER, should the doctor be allowed to refuse to save your life because their religion tells them so? NO.
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No lives are ever saved when a woman has an abortion. Every time a woman has an abortion a life is lost. Sometimes 2 if the woman suffers from PASS and decides to end her life as a result of having had an abortion. It does happen.

Gay rights and Abortion are two very seperate issues. Please keep them seperate. As a bisexual person who is also very strongly pro life, you bringing gay rights into this issue is very upsetting for me. Since the 2 issues should be kept seperately. What makes me pro life also makes me want to protect the rights of other discriminated members of our society.

The rules of a doctor say do no harm. Abortion by it's very nature does harm to both the baby and the mother. So NO doctor should perform an abortion. The fact they do this is unethnical and hopefully one day it will stop.

I applaud that doctors decision to go to jail rather then kill a living baby. If he went to jail I would write and thank him for saving the babies life and the mothers life too.

We need to have more doctors like this in the world. It's the doctors that do abortions that should be sent to jail not the ones that don't.

We need MORE doctors like that spanish doctor. Not less. That's just the way I feel about it. In fact if I thought I was being seen by a doctor who performed abortions I'd feel very uncomfortable about it and ask to change to see a differant doctor who had more respect for life.
 
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dreama said:
The rules of a doctor say do no harm. Abortion by it's very nature does harm to both the baby and the mother. So NO doctor should perform an abortion. The fact they do this is unethnical and hopefully one day it will stop.
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But abortion is, performed by a doctor and not in a back alley with a coathanger, far LESS dangerous than carrying a pregnancy and giving birth. The doctor is only there to treat the patient that can talk- and medically, it's more of a risk for any healthy woman to carry a pregnancy, than it is to abort.

But that's offtopic to the comment I meant, which was for emergency situations. There are cases in which abortion is the only solution to prevent a mother's imminent death. A doctor should not be allowed to decline to do these procedures. Period.
 
Aleser said:
There are cases in which abortion is the only solution to prevent a mother's imminent death. A doctor should not be allowed to decline to do these procedures. Period.
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These cases are extremely rare. Most abortions are done to healthy babies inside healthy mothers who just turn up at the wrong time or arn't what the parents wanted for whatever reason.

Even in these cases some mothers would prefere to die rather then kill their baby. I read about a pregnant woman who had cancer. She did not want to abort the fetuses of her twins, even though they were putting her at risk. The doctors managed it so that all 3 patients survied.
I could applaud a woman like that just as I would applaud that spanish doctor if he went to jail for his beliefs.
 
Aleser said:
If you are a gay person and show up to an ER, should the doctor be allowed to refuse to save your life because their religion tells them so? NO.

Likewise, who is to say that these doctors may not be the doctors killing a woman because she needs an emergency abortion.. and they wont perform it? There's not always another doctor.
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People don't go to the ER to get abortions done. You have to remember that there are a long list of professions in the medical field. So the responsibilities don't apply the same to every profession.

Abortion involves the killing of a fetus and a good number of gynecologists will not perform the procedure in the USA. Some gynecologists run their ownprivate practices and they will refuse abortions and it's within their rights to do so. Heck, even the original Hippocratic Oath clearly stated that doctors are not to assist women to procure abortions.
 
Aleser said:
it's more of a risk for any healthy woman to carry a pregnancy, than it is to abort.
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Not true. It's only more safe to have an abortion than carrying it to full term is if the fetus is less than eight weeks. If it's over 12 weeks, you are at quite a high risk if you get an abortion done.
 
Banjo said:
People don't go to the ER to get abortions done. You have to remember that there are a long list of professions in the medical field. So the responsibilities don't apply the same to every profession.
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I did not say that people go to ERs to get abortions- although, in an emergency situation, that's sure where they might show up. If you are a doctor whose realm of practice allows for performing abortion, refusing to perform an emergency abortion should have severe legal consequences.
 
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