Pro-life health care providers are under fire and could be forced out of the profession for declining to participate in abortions. How would that impact patients if the only doctors available are pro-abortion?
Concerned Women for America (CWA) is working to protect conscientious health care providers from being forced out of the profession, because we understand what that would mean to patients. If doctors with strong conscientious beliefs about the sanctity of life are not allowed to practice, then patients will lose their choice of providers and will be forced to go to doctors they do not trust.
The following are comments from patients on why they choose pro-life health care providers:
Elaine Driscoll
I want to know that the doctor who is making recommendations on my health will do their very best to make my life better than when I walked into his office, not limit care based on what the costs will be, or what government/insurance regulations are. They shouldn’t have to make a determination on what my quality of life is worth according to government regulations.
Protecting Conscience and Patients
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Women should not be forced to put their unborn children under the care of someone who would recommend taking that life rather than working to preserve it. Pro-abortion doctors do not make women feel safe; mothers cannot be assured that pro-abortion doctors hold the mother and child’s best interest in every situation.
Lydia Harman
It is vital to me to have doctors and health care providers who respect life! Whether there is a minor or serious health concern for me or one of my family members, I want to know that health care providers who assist us will ALWAYS focus on the preservation of life. How else can I trust their judgment and care of my family?
Anne Ball
Our family has a female, pro-life doctor who has delivered hundreds of babies over the years. We appreciate having a physician who considers life to be precious; in large measure because we know she translates the values we share into her treatment of our children. We have a college-aged daughter who has grown up with this doctor, and we know we can trust our doctor to reinforce her decision to remain sexually pure. She freely answers our daughter’s questions with the truth we all know – truth that Hollywood, the media, and even our public agencies won’t tell young people. That truth is that the way to live healthy is to reserve sex for marriage between a man and a woman.
Judy Haggard
If all doctors who profess to be Christian were to abandon their practices, if they were forced to choose between that or providing abortions, it would cause unfathomable consequences. These consequences would be felt by their patients and our health care system. I am appalled that our country has come to this. How did this happen?
My doctor is a wonderful Catholic and has donated to our local pregnancy center when I have asked him to. Would he leave his practice? I would be devastated if that happened. How would he provide for his family? What would he choose? How could he choose? It will not be the United States of America any longer if we allow this to happen. Our Constitution will be of no value, and I can’t even think about what life will be like for my beautiful granddaughter.
Pam Cole
We should have the right to have a doctor who respects life and who is NOT pro-choice. Where will our “choice” be if doctors who refuse to do abortions are pushed out as our medical providers?
Bruce and Beth Spitzer
There are many reasons why I want access to pro-life doctors, but I am just going to focus on one situation that my family is dealing with right now. My uncle (my dad’s brother) suffered a massive stroke a few weeks ago. He never married, never left the farm on which he grew up, and was the caretaker for my 94-year-old grandmother.
My grandmother is the one who found her son lying on the floor, unable to move or speak. She called 911 and then a neighbor to come and help. He was taken to the nearest large town via ambulance and then life-flighted to Minneapolis.
After a tense 24 hours he was able to squeeze the nurse’s hand with his left hand. The stroke affected his entire right side. The problem was that within less than a week of the stroke, the doctors were asking for phone conference calls with my uncle’s siblings to decide end-of-life issues. Should they resuscitate? Did they want a feeding tube? Did they want a tracheotomy? All this was asked after giving the prognosis that my uncle would never live on his own again, that he would need help with many things, etc. Doom and gloom seemed to be all that was presented – no hope of what rehabilitation could do and no joy in preserving a life. I became very angry about the feeling that I had that they were trying to save their hospital money.
I do not believe they saw the value of my uncle’s life. I feel like they had written him off because, from their point of view, he was just an old bachelor who lived on a farm. They did not see how important he was for my grandmother, how he sang in the church choir, or how he helped his neighbors.
I hope and pray those in the medical field will come from a life-preserving perspective rather than a cost-effectiveness model.
Marci Mallinger
These doctors have taken an oath to protect life, and to deny them the conviction of their profession and of their heart cannot be tolerated and must be guarded and protected legally.
Elizabeth Kraus Munro
Doctors are respected opinion leaders in cities, states, and our nation. If I give my business to a pro-life doctor, he/she can use the income from my patronage to support righteous causes. Also, I will have the opportunity to form a relationship with her/him to encourage involvement with pro-life lobbying from the high status position of a medical professional.
Judy Smith
As a pharmacist who is old enough to remember the Hippocratic Oath that doctors used to take, which states they are to “do no harm,” I am appalled that our government thinks it is okay to trump that precedent which separated physicians from witch doctors. In ancient times, a witch doctor could give either life or death depending upon his whim, but all that changed with Hippocrates. Naturally, a doctor has to make life-and-death decisions; however, those decisions should not be based on a government mandate, on a conflict of interest, or upon the vagaries of public opinion. Protecting life is always the right thing to do. It should not be up for debate by ideologues who want to force their opinions on other doctors and in the process destroy not only careers but innocent lives. Whether a doctor is pro-life is my FIRST criterion in choosing a physician; I will not go to a doctor who is not pro-life, because I know that if he/she will protect an innocent unborn life, he/she will protect my life.
Joann Fowler
An individual’s respect for life should be the first qualification of a physician, and I have no confidence in the competency and judgment of those working within the medical field who disregard the sanctity of life.
A health care professional who is able to willfully perform or assist in performing an abortion does not respect or have any regard toward life. This reflects on their ability to act with good judgment and right principles. If they are able to act in such a way toward the most defenseless of people, and in such gruesome ways, why would I think they would care for me as a patient? I could not feel confident that they would act in my best interest, but instead, would act out of expediency and convenience. The decisions of a physician who performs abortions are not morally based; he is acting out of his own self-interest, and not on behalf of anyone else.
The standards of good health would be lowered as a result, from the type of drugs being used, to cleanliness of procedures, to the type of supporting staff hired to assist. The entire environment of the medical institution would be affected. Without moral conscience and principle being the plum line, research would be limited and reduced to support the relative judgment of those in authority, which at this point would be the government rather than health care professionals.
Why is it that all we are hearing is the side of the abortionists? Should those professionals who are willing to lay down their careers be ignored? Should the reason they are willing to do so not be considered when so much is at stake? We owe it to ourselves and to the rest of the country to consider what they have to say about this very important issue, and dare others to give heed!
Catherine Huff
I want a pro-life doctor, because I want to rest secure in the knowledge that my physician is committed to saving lives and not taking them. I do not want to go to a doctor who has the blood of innocent children on his hands.