In the first part and the second part of the series, I have attempted to make the case that our culture has a concerning deficiency in ethics and morality (henceforth morality will refer to both), and this deficit negatively impacts many areas of our society including the financially driven practice of medicine. Because abortion is such a complex topic that touches on the core of life itself, it provides an excellent perspective for cutting to the essence of the fundamental decisions that guide our lives.
It is highly regrettable that abortion, which is a complicated and sometimes dangerous medical procedure, a family planning tool, a population control tool (preventing some births with known fetal abnormalities), sometimes a medical tool (if the mother has certain health problems) is discussed with such fervor, toxicity and hate on both sides.
My dream is being able to discuss it with some compassion, understanding of many circumstances, and yet ALSO respect for the young life being carried, and for the complexity of intersecting interests.
Do the mother's interests matter? Yes
Is the unborn child a child? Yes
How to balance it? That's a hard question. But do NOT shy away from it.
A world with no abortions, or a world with no regard for life of the child, would be a mean world.
Unfortunately, abortion is a wedge issue, useful to exploit politically for both parties and their sponsors, so it will remain a toxic topic.
Excellent paper from a spiritual, emotional and physical level. As an obstetrician, these discussions are encountered on a daily basis. I have never in my career nor as a resident done an abortion. There are so many stories from an infection from a metal clothes hanger to a woman who delivered, and 4 weeks later decided to put enough dirt down her baby’s mouth and soffocate him. To a young gal who knew she couldn’t raise the baby and I coordinated the adoption. Another incident where, during the csection the girl crying finally said her father did this to her. You try, as a physician to navigate these social issues the best you can and take them home with me , hoping and praying that God has given me (or any physician) , the wisdom to help your patients and honor the oath you took. These times we live in are so politicized that nativigating through them have been terrifying for me . I loved my job but no longer happy I picked this specialty. I pray that someday, when I am judged I always advised my patients appropriately. Thanks amidwesterndoctordoctor and Tritorch for your enlightened and heartfelt discussions.
The clinics double as tissue factories delivering high volumes of butchered baby parts to colleges and government agencies like the FDA. In one experiment, the HHS was caught using human fetal cells to try to humanize mice, meanwhile these same cells can be found in many food products and cosmetics and are often a primary incubator for growing and culturing vaccines. Meanwhile satanist consider abortion a religious right and are lobbying states to pass legislation to enshrine their right to practice it into law.
Anyone who can look at any of what follows and think it is a sane and rational way to treat the most innocent and vulnerable among us is both spiritually bankrupt and morally dead:
Thank you for raising the question(s). More than ever, solutions are called for.
Discussing ethics, strangely, tries to establish a common denominator between the profane and the divine. With religion used for justifying the established order, it was easier, although not easy.
Any standards, including "ethics," must be rooted in the prevalent ideology of a culture. Such ideologies have been used in civilizations to justify the power of the rulers and the "well-deserved fate" of the disenfranchised.
In the US, the last widely-proclaimed ideology was the "American Dream," but even according to George Carlin, it's called a dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
When it comes to canonizing "ethics," the age-old question always sticks out of the box:
"Who is going to watch over the watchers?"
Once enforcers are given power, the same power can be abused against anyone...
I LOVE YOU. What a wonderful world it would be if people could with good will sit down and talk things through like this. I agree with most of what you said here.
Jun 30, 2022·edited Jul 1, 2022Liked by A Midwestern Doctor
Wonderful collection!
During my 23 years of academic teaching, I was probably the only professor, who welcomed "controversial topics." Abortion was one of them. I emphasized that evaluation of a student's performance was based on the applicability of his/her argument. I never presented my opinion, so even at the end of the semester, a student or two usually asked me what I though. In response, I said, "It doesn't matter what I think, what matters in your life is what you think."
When practicing one-sided arguments (or call them rhetorical speeches), I also instructed my students that the most convincing form of an argument convinces the other party that accepting my point of view if the best for THEM! That is exactly where the article excels the most: making an attempt to prevent all the damages caused by abortion to the mother. After all, most people don't care for what I say, but they care for what's best for them...
A thoughtful and complex exploration in these times when everything is shunted into an oversimplified inflammatory binary. I'd love to hear more about shared death experiences. I just recently read After by Bruce Greyson on his 50 years of study of NDE's, and I've read a little of the alternate theories and rebuttals, all of which seem like Kuhnian desperation rather than strong arguments.
There's a Japanese ceremony for children lost to abortion or miscarriage https://www.lionsroar.com/for-the-children-weve-lost/. We are going to need something like this here since some parents are so lobotomized by the sophisticated propaganda that there will be many child deaths. I think your experience of and knowledge about SDE's would be helpful in this regard as it is almost impossible to take in that this is happening. It is comforting to read such an in depth almost rabbinical analysis when we are barraged with incendiary enraging soundbytes masquerading as news every second.
I would love to say I had high moral and spiritual principles at age 20 when I did NOT have an abortion amid great pressure to do so........ I did not have an abortion because I was deathly afraid of doctors and the medical system. Thank God! (And my first son is awesome.)
Jun 30, 2022·edited Jun 30, 2022Liked by A Midwestern Doctor
I also tried to educate my yoga students (and clients) on the many side effects and dangers of statin drugs! I’m still reading your article, but felt compelled to comment before finishing it :)
Jun 29, 2022·edited Jun 29, 2022Liked by A Midwestern Doctor
It is ironic that at a time when DEI is shoved down the throats from corporate America & her government that there is a refusal to see diversity in populations when it comes to the vaccination protocols and in medicine in general.
I have a theory that some of this is related to medicine's relationship with insurance. I have worked in life sales for much of my career and as a result I am comfortable with the topic of risk management and I have read more than my share of APS records. As guidelines are released to the field, the goal is to field underwrite as much as possible to determine a possible price, because frankly, you don't want to waste everyone's time. Underwriting is an art and it takes time to learn to do it well and like many industries, the lack of training is now seen as an expensive nuisance. As automation came in, I found myself having to constantly go back and argue with 'the machine ' that was penalizing the customer for the minutiae where an experienced human underwriter would take the 40,000 foot view and the back and forth wouldn't be necessary. For example, a total cholesterol number might be high at 230, but the ratio low at 3.5, with great BP and family history. It has improved, but more than once I had to explain 'insurance medicine' (populations) vs individual when a client complained that his/her doctor said there was nothing to worry about. There may be some truth to how insurance is influencing medicine, but maybe not quite in the way people think. It sounds more like they have migrated to a risk management platform more than anything.
I am speaking from a life perspective, but the idea is attributable to other lines as well. One teacher of mine drew a picture for me one day of 100 dots and proceeded to draw little x's through them saying the actuaries know that this many dots will die from a heart attack, this many in a car accident, etc. They just don't know who, so the best guess is to look for those people that have a likelihood that will increase the chances.
Obama once said the sad thing about abortions is a society that pushes young women to do such things. Whist I agree, it is a naïve view of the inherent risk/reward model that is offered to many sexually active women. Access to abortion gives women a unique tool that drastically decreases the risk and alters the balance of the decision.
You let slip that you only count abortion as murder if you consider a soul present.
Personally I believe the unique, self replicating DNA to be the touchstone that dictates all abortion is murder. The unique DNA in a mothers womb is not a virus and will never grow be a tree or a dog. Since a human womb is an organ for generating human babies, the DNA that is nurtured in that womb is therefore at all times a human and all humans are persons (unless you're in Canada!). The argument about viability is a distraction: An infant will die if it is not cared for. It is inconsequential as to the number of parties that *could* care for an infant, it will die without help.
I believe the Catholic viewpoint to be logically consistent with a scientific/quantitative worldview in this case. The moment of conception creates new human life.
Oh my Lord you write long posts. You are testing my mental acuity. 😏
Let me begin by saying that you are an uncommonly kind person.
Watching world events unfold on our nightly TV news programs can lead us to believe that "our culture has a concerning deficiency in ethics and morality." However, I don't agree. I believe that these impressions are all manufactured by those in control of the media. Turn the TV off and look around you. People are ethical and moral. What you see in the media is mostly lies. Actors paid to riot, paid to protest, paid to hold up signs saying stupid things like, "I will aid and abet abortion" and others equally idiotic. Noone, in reality, thinks like that. They are lying to you. Some young women might get caught up in the furor but the rogue ones are paid.
I believe we are born knowing right from wrong and if we are fortunate, we have parents that instill these morals further in us but even if we don't, our intelligence requires us to be moral. Being moral and ethical is the biggest part of being human. It's as simple as that.
I agree with your assessment of sensitivity and specificity with regard to prescribing medication and medical procedures as being skewed toward favouring the highest profit margin of all players involved. Unfortunately that sounds all too common, repeated in industries across the globe ad infinitum.
As I have suggested before, with regard to the Roe v. Wade case, I would argue that it may have been a diversionary tactic by those in control to get attention off the vaccine injuries and other government bungling. They massage and control the masses through the intelligence agencies, military, government and media. 'All the world is a stage' is true.
In reality, I don't think any woman wants to have an abortion but bad choices sometimes makes it necessary. The woman then has to live with that choice for the rest of her life and despite what the media puts out there, noone takes that lightly.
As far as covid and lockdowns go, I must diverge from your theory again. I believe it happened in lockstep around the world for a reason. A small minority of those in control wanted it that way. It was choreographed and coordinated across the globe. Evil people decided the parameters and I would argue that questions of sensitivity and specificity were not even considered. ☹️ If they had been, we would be in a much better place now.
It is highly regrettable that abortion, which is a complicated and sometimes dangerous medical procedure, a family planning tool, a population control tool (preventing some births with known fetal abnormalities), sometimes a medical tool (if the mother has certain health problems) is discussed with such fervor, toxicity and hate on both sides.
My dream is being able to discuss it with some compassion, understanding of many circumstances, and yet ALSO respect for the young life being carried, and for the complexity of intersecting interests.
Do the mother's interests matter? Yes
Is the unborn child a child? Yes
How to balance it? That's a hard question. But do NOT shy away from it.
A world with no abortions, or a world with no regard for life of the child, would be a mean world.
Unfortunately, abortion is a wedge issue, useful to exploit politically for both parties and their sponsors, so it will remain a toxic topic.
Excellent paper from a spiritual, emotional and physical level. As an obstetrician, these discussions are encountered on a daily basis. I have never in my career nor as a resident done an abortion. There are so many stories from an infection from a metal clothes hanger to a woman who delivered, and 4 weeks later decided to put enough dirt down her baby’s mouth and soffocate him. To a young gal who knew she couldn’t raise the baby and I coordinated the adoption. Another incident where, during the csection the girl crying finally said her father did this to her. You try, as a physician to navigate these social issues the best you can and take them home with me , hoping and praying that God has given me (or any physician) , the wisdom to help your patients and honor the oath you took. These times we live in are so politicized that nativigating through them have been terrifying for me . I loved my job but no longer happy I picked this specialty. I pray that someday, when I am judged I always advised my patients appropriately. Thanks amidwesterndoctordoctor and Tritorch for your enlightened and heartfelt discussions.
Excellent article. On the subject of abortions:
The clinics double as tissue factories delivering high volumes of butchered baby parts to colleges and government agencies like the FDA. In one experiment, the HHS was caught using human fetal cells to try to humanize mice, meanwhile these same cells can be found in many food products and cosmetics and are often a primary incubator for growing and culturing vaccines. Meanwhile satanist consider abortion a religious right and are lobbying states to pass legislation to enshrine their right to practice it into law.
Anyone who can look at any of what follows and think it is a sane and rational way to treat the most innocent and vulnerable among us is both spiritually bankrupt and morally dead:
https://tritorch.com/abortionslope
Thank you for raising the question(s). More than ever, solutions are called for.
Discussing ethics, strangely, tries to establish a common denominator between the profane and the divine. With religion used for justifying the established order, it was easier, although not easy.
Any standards, including "ethics," must be rooted in the prevalent ideology of a culture. Such ideologies have been used in civilizations to justify the power of the rulers and the "well-deserved fate" of the disenfranchised.
In the US, the last widely-proclaimed ideology was the "American Dream," but even according to George Carlin, it's called a dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
When it comes to canonizing "ethics," the age-old question always sticks out of the box:
"Who is going to watch over the watchers?"
Once enforcers are given power, the same power can be abused against anyone...
Any solutions?
I LOVE YOU. What a wonderful world it would be if people could with good will sit down and talk things through like this. I agree with most of what you said here.
Wonderful collection!
During my 23 years of academic teaching, I was probably the only professor, who welcomed "controversial topics." Abortion was one of them. I emphasized that evaluation of a student's performance was based on the applicability of his/her argument. I never presented my opinion, so even at the end of the semester, a student or two usually asked me what I though. In response, I said, "It doesn't matter what I think, what matters in your life is what you think."
When practicing one-sided arguments (or call them rhetorical speeches), I also instructed my students that the most convincing form of an argument convinces the other party that accepting my point of view if the best for THEM! That is exactly where the article excels the most: making an attempt to prevent all the damages caused by abortion to the mother. After all, most people don't care for what I say, but they care for what's best for them...
A thoughtful and complex exploration in these times when everything is shunted into an oversimplified inflammatory binary. I'd love to hear more about shared death experiences. I just recently read After by Bruce Greyson on his 50 years of study of NDE's, and I've read a little of the alternate theories and rebuttals, all of which seem like Kuhnian desperation rather than strong arguments.
There's a Japanese ceremony for children lost to abortion or miscarriage https://www.lionsroar.com/for-the-children-weve-lost/. We are going to need something like this here since some parents are so lobotomized by the sophisticated propaganda that there will be many child deaths. I think your experience of and knowledge about SDE's would be helpful in this regard as it is almost impossible to take in that this is happening. It is comforting to read such an in depth almost rabbinical analysis when we are barraged with incendiary enraging soundbytes masquerading as news every second.
I´ve been missing Your articles! I almost started worrying ;-)
It´s so inspiring to read them! Thanks from across the pond!
I would love to say I had high moral and spiritual principles at age 20 when I did NOT have an abortion amid great pressure to do so........ I did not have an abortion because I was deathly afraid of doctors and the medical system. Thank God! (And my first son is awesome.)
I also tried to educate my yoga students (and clients) on the many side effects and dangers of statin drugs! I’m still reading your article, but felt compelled to comment before finishing it :)
It is ironic that at a time when DEI is shoved down the throats from corporate America & her government that there is a refusal to see diversity in populations when it comes to the vaccination protocols and in medicine in general.
I have a theory that some of this is related to medicine's relationship with insurance. I have worked in life sales for much of my career and as a result I am comfortable with the topic of risk management and I have read more than my share of APS records. As guidelines are released to the field, the goal is to field underwrite as much as possible to determine a possible price, because frankly, you don't want to waste everyone's time. Underwriting is an art and it takes time to learn to do it well and like many industries, the lack of training is now seen as an expensive nuisance. As automation came in, I found myself having to constantly go back and argue with 'the machine ' that was penalizing the customer for the minutiae where an experienced human underwriter would take the 40,000 foot view and the back and forth wouldn't be necessary. For example, a total cholesterol number might be high at 230, but the ratio low at 3.5, with great BP and family history. It has improved, but more than once I had to explain 'insurance medicine' (populations) vs individual when a client complained that his/her doctor said there was nothing to worry about. There may be some truth to how insurance is influencing medicine, but maybe not quite in the way people think. It sounds more like they have migrated to a risk management platform more than anything.
I am speaking from a life perspective, but the idea is attributable to other lines as well. One teacher of mine drew a picture for me one day of 100 dots and proceeded to draw little x's through them saying the actuaries know that this many dots will die from a heart attack, this many in a car accident, etc. They just don't know who, so the best guess is to look for those people that have a likelihood that will increase the chances.
Fantastic article. Thank you so much!
Obama once said the sad thing about abortions is a society that pushes young women to do such things. Whist I agree, it is a naïve view of the inherent risk/reward model that is offered to many sexually active women. Access to abortion gives women a unique tool that drastically decreases the risk and alters the balance of the decision.
You let slip that you only count abortion as murder if you consider a soul present.
Personally I believe the unique, self replicating DNA to be the touchstone that dictates all abortion is murder. The unique DNA in a mothers womb is not a virus and will never grow be a tree or a dog. Since a human womb is an organ for generating human babies, the DNA that is nurtured in that womb is therefore at all times a human and all humans are persons (unless you're in Canada!). The argument about viability is a distraction: An infant will die if it is not cared for. It is inconsequential as to the number of parties that *could* care for an infant, it will die without help.
I believe the Catholic viewpoint to be logically consistent with a scientific/quantitative worldview in this case. The moment of conception creates new human life.
Doctor, you churn these out so fast. Do you ever sleep? Thanks for your work.
Oh my Lord you write long posts. You are testing my mental acuity. 😏
Let me begin by saying that you are an uncommonly kind person.
Watching world events unfold on our nightly TV news programs can lead us to believe that "our culture has a concerning deficiency in ethics and morality." However, I don't agree. I believe that these impressions are all manufactured by those in control of the media. Turn the TV off and look around you. People are ethical and moral. What you see in the media is mostly lies. Actors paid to riot, paid to protest, paid to hold up signs saying stupid things like, "I will aid and abet abortion" and others equally idiotic. Noone, in reality, thinks like that. They are lying to you. Some young women might get caught up in the furor but the rogue ones are paid.
I believe we are born knowing right from wrong and if we are fortunate, we have parents that instill these morals further in us but even if we don't, our intelligence requires us to be moral. Being moral and ethical is the biggest part of being human. It's as simple as that.
I agree with your assessment of sensitivity and specificity with regard to prescribing medication and medical procedures as being skewed toward favouring the highest profit margin of all players involved. Unfortunately that sounds all too common, repeated in industries across the globe ad infinitum.
As I have suggested before, with regard to the Roe v. Wade case, I would argue that it may have been a diversionary tactic by those in control to get attention off the vaccine injuries and other government bungling. They massage and control the masses through the intelligence agencies, military, government and media. 'All the world is a stage' is true.
In reality, I don't think any woman wants to have an abortion but bad choices sometimes makes it necessary. The woman then has to live with that choice for the rest of her life and despite what the media puts out there, noone takes that lightly.
As far as covid and lockdowns go, I must diverge from your theory again. I believe it happened in lockstep around the world for a reason. A small minority of those in control wanted it that way. It was choreographed and coordinated across the globe. Evil people decided the parameters and I would argue that questions of sensitivity and specificity were not even considered. ☹️ If they had been, we would be in a much better place now.
Good article.
Profound and very sensitively handled. Running out of new superlatives here, AMWD. Bless you, times a million :D