Catholic Health Care Advocates Papers
Is Your Doctor a Threat to Life?
Dr. Hayes
In a policy statement from 1866, the American Medical Association noted that: "All physicians have now arrived at the unanimous opinion that the fetus in utero is alive from the very moment of conception." This statement entitled: The Criminality and Physical Evils of Forced Abortions goes on to say that: "to extinguish the first spark of life is a crime of the same nature, both against our Maker and society, as to destroy an infant, a child or a man." Continuing further, the AMA goes on to say: "the deliberate prevention of pregnancy is detrimental to the health and to the moral sense." Compare these statements from over 100 years ago to the 1990 statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: "There is no scientific consensus that a human life begins at conception at a given stage of fetal development or at birth. When life begins cannot be tested by scientific method but instead depends on each individual's beliefs and values." So what happens to patients when they receive care from physicians adhering to the last statement as opposed to the life-affirming position of the AMA from a century earlier? Can a doctor really ignore the inherent immorality of contraception, sterilization, abortion, and certain, modern infertility treatments like In-Vitro Fertilization, and not put his patients in jeopardy? The physician who accepts contraception as simply standard "medical care", devoid of any moral aspects, has, at the most fundamental level of his or her practice, embraced an unnatural separation of life and love between men and women, opening the door for all kinds of immoral modes of behavior. The Holy Father, John Paul II, has said of users of contraception: "Users of contraception attribute to themselves a power that belongs only to God." How much more true is this of physicians prescribing contraceptive drugs and devices? Contraception, in all of its various forms, is an offense of the highest order against the very nature of life and love. Physicians practicing with this "contraceptive mentality," must necessarily be working with a fundamentally disordered approach to life and love which most definitely has an influence on all of the kinds of care their patients may receive. Even if a given patient is a practitioner of natural family planning (NFP), and eschews the entire contraceptive mentality of the physician she may be seeing, the very essence of the doctor-patient relationship is inherently corrupt in these situations. The disparity between the patients' acceptance of the intimacy of life and love and her physicians rejection of it, creates not only a tremendous communication gap, but also leaves the patient susceptible to all manner of subtle attacks as it pertains to her own medical care and family life. Imagine a relationship between an accountant who thinks embezzling money from clients is an acceptable practice. Even if a client rejects the moral perspective of the corrupt accountant, can the client be sure at any time, whether his own money is at risk? Unfortunately, we don't hold our doctors to the same level of accountability (no pun intended). Or is it that we have ceased to believe in the fundamental immorality of contraception? A physician performing sterilizations on men and women is similarly afflicted with a moral nearsightedness, albeit a more severe one, than our former example. This physician goes one step further than just accepting the immorality of making any single act of marital intimacy into an entirely selfish performance as contraception does. Sterilization requires a physician to accept the very destruction of normally functioning human anatomy as healthy and actually desirable. Besides being an entirely alien approach for a doctor to accept this attack on the body as "medicine", this takes the defective moral approach of contraception to a new level, as sterilization permanently scars the marital relationship, a union of life and love, with a calculating and deliberate barrenness of family life. A common response from patients regarding the immorality of these sterilization procedures and the doctors who perform them might be: "but these patients wanted the procedure done. They asked for the doctor to do this and I would never ask for a sterilization." This may be true enough, but would this response be defensive of the physician and security-inducing for the responding patient if it involved say, the loss of sight. Suppose it was learned that a physician was deliberately destroying the eyesight of people who were willing to pay for this "service". Would this information have no effect on patients seeking a doctor for an eye-exam? Would we so quickly defend the liberty of the patient requesting the procedure and feel comforted by the doctor's response to the patients’ demands? Would we allow this physician to examine our own eyes? Seeing an abortionist, for medical care, is simply out of the question for many people who have a strong stand for life. But, from my experience, few patients ever ask their physician what his or her stand is, regarding the willful taking of innocent human life in the womb. Most patients assume that the physician they see, accepts abortion as murder, as they themselves may. And while this may be a safe assumption, as physicians, in general, greatly outnumber abortionists, what about the physician who accepts abortion even with certain restrictions (rape, incest or life of the mother), while he or she may not actually perform them? This is, reportedly, the stand of the majority of physicians(as well as patients) and so it seems easy to conclude that most people are seeing a doctor who has some degree of complicity in our cultures' wanton destruction of human life. If a physician can compromise on the value of innocent human life in the womb, for whatever reason, how can the patient be so sure that they, their unborn baby or other family members, will not be the next "compromise" this physician makes? The peril for the patients here, seems to be very clear, requiring no analogies for illustration. Yet the fact remains that the majority of patients appear to compromise here, themselves, allowing for insurance, existing relationship with their physician or even proximity to the doctor’s office to take precedence over the sanctity of life. This seems unexplainable.
The perilous relationship between patients and physicians supporting abortion is probably only exceeded by the doctor-patient relationship between patients and so-called "Infertility specialists" or those physicians supporting the new Assisted Reproductive Technologies. These Assisted Reproductive Technologies (with the dubious acronym of ART) include all manner of artificial processes substituting for the normal act of marital love, up to and including; In Vitro Fertilization or "test-tube babies". The physician in supporting and/or performing these procedures truly has established himself or herself as God, ordering and performing procedures that replace the natural origins of life between husband and wife. Even abortion plays a role in these procedures and is at least a potentially, if not mandatory, part of these artificial origins of life. These physicians seek to create babies outside the womb and then insert an unnaturally large number of them into the womb, only to then counsel, possibly even require, the destruction of some of those innocent babies, through a process frighteningly termed "Selective Reduction", if more than three (or whatever number the doctor decides) happen to survive. This is truly God's gift of life completely debased by man. The patients supporting these physicians usually have no idea about the destruction of human life they may be asked to accept, all in the attempt to have a child of their own. This is the deliberate manipulation of human life according to the physicians whim, masquerading as science and charity for the childless couple. Can these patients, patronizing these doctors be so sure their physician will not seek to "play God" in other areas related to them or their loved ones’ care? It may appear that I have been entirely too critical of physicians who do not see contraception, abortion, sterilization and artificial reproductive technologies as fundamentally disordered. As a physician who used to separate the morality of these assaults on the dignity of human life from patient care, I feel at least qualified to alert patients to the potential dangers of such doctor-patient relationships. An early Christian writer from the 6th century, Caesarius of Arles, poses a challenging question: "Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion so that she is unable to conceive...?" I hope always to be counted among those who seek to warn women and families about the potential perils involved in modern medical care and continue to offer the most sound piece of medical advice, which is: seek medical care from a practice of NFP (Natural Family Planning)-only physicians. If there isn’t an NFP-only clinic in your city, see about establishing one. It just might mean the difference of life for someone in your own family.
Dr. Hayes is an Obstetrician/Gynecologist with Holy Family Medical Specialties in Lincoln, Nebraska. Holy Family Medical Specialties is the only NFP-only medical clinic in the St. Elizabeth Physician Network- a Catholic Health Initiatives affiliated company.
