Nice to see O'Bama working on getting rid of midnight Bush rules

[kandrathe]

Do you think then it's still right to withhold that information?

It depends upon the situation. If we are talking about a Catholic hospital, then perhaps conscience can be a guide. If you are working for Planned Parenthood, then you probably would always offer to abort the baby.

If you, as a medical practitioner, refuse to perform part of these duties, then you shouldn't be in the position of medical practitioner.

I don't know about you, but I'm always the one who is asking about things that my doctors have not recommended. Why would I blindly trust that a single doctor has "all" the answers? They also tend to never recommend some things, like chiropractics, like acupuncture, and other non-traditional treatments that I research and bring up during our consultations.

So, as I said, you're too narrow minded on what you view medicine does.

I agree with the dictionary, and the encyclopedia's definition of medicine and the role of a physician. I would say that I understand what "Quality of Life" means, and how to get it for myself. I'm not sick, I don't have a terminal illness, and I don't need pain medication. So, my quality of life comes from raising my children, making artful things, and tending to my home. I think this is why many cities are compared for "quality of life" which includes things like arts, parks, crime, schools, etc.

You don't understand what medical professionals do and your continued argument about a narrow minded view of what medicine is about shows that you don't understand it even when you post quotes from various doctors that state that medicine is about improve the quality of life of the patient.

You keep saying I don't understand, however, I know you are wrong so I won't waste the time needed to defend that useless ad hominem attack. My challenge to you then is to show me some quotes where doctors say that the definition of medicine is only something as vague as "improving a persons quality of life".

What you did was you danced a jig around it and never fully answered the question. You allude to in your comments that you felt the unborn life was more important, here let's go back and look at what you said:

The salient portion is "Not knowing exactly at what point a human being becomes one is an ethical issue that I would trust a doctor to decide, when weighing all the risk factors. I'm glad I'm not the one making the decision, because my uncertainty would tend to make me want to err ethically on the safe side."

So if I take this the way you wrote it, once an unborn child hits 5 months, even if the unborn child could kill the mother, the child must be born or it's infanticide. So the if birthing said unborn child kills the mother and the child, so be it because killing the child after 5 months is infanticide and the doctor should be put up on charges of some degree of murder even though the doctor is saving the life of the woman from a pregnancy gone bad. There isn't a whole lot of gray area here to work with Kan. You can hand wring all you want, but when it comes down to the choice, you either are potentially condemning two human beings to death or one that hasn't even experienced anything outside the womb.

Doctors kill people all the time and are not brought up on charges. It is an occupational hazard that we all recognize is a part of their job, to make life and death decisions. Take a case of conjoined twins; separating them sometimes kills one, which is a risk that is taken and sometimes it results in a death. If the doctor is negligent, then he might face a malpractice suit, or other legal problems.

We're not talking about treating a fetus as disposable, we're talking about a situation where the mother's life is in danger if the pregnancy goes forward.

In that case, as I've said, it is a decision that the doctor and the pregnant woman would make when taking into account all the risks. My objection to abortion is when it is used to dispose of babies when they are inconvenient.

Ummm...have you read about what RU-486 actually does?

Look we basically agree, although I would recommend something like "Plan B" rather than an abortifacient like Mifepristone. In small doses it can also act as an emergency contraceptive, but it has more side effects.

If you had associated with medical professionals, this whole argument would be moot. The fact that you continue to push and make wild comments and try to use sources to make your argument stand when the sources you give show the exact opposite shows that you don't have a good idea what medical professionals do. You think you know, but you don't have the experience of being around them and seeing what they do.

Like I said before, you have no idea who I associate with. Please don't pretend to know about my life, because you are pretty clueless about it.