By Dave Andrusko
Carole Joffe is a veteran pro-abortion apologist whose writings are welcomed in the pages of publications such as the Washington Post. I remember once reading the following at rhrealitycheck.org [now renamed https://rewirenewsgroup.com] where she wrote
The specifics of abortion methods can be unpleasant to the lay public. However, this is true of most operations that remove tissue from the body.
“Specifics” such sawing off limbs from living unborn children, suctioning arms and legs, etc., etc. Just like any other “operation.”
Under the headline “Failing to embed abortion care in mainstream medicine made it politically vulnerable: Actions by the medical profession in the 1970s still reverberate today,” Joffe’s thesis in the Washington Post is that the male dominated, conservative, don’t-rock-the-boat medical establishment that existed at the time of Roe and years after wanted little to nothing to do with abortion [https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/11/failing-embed-abortion-care-mainstream-medicine-made-it-politically-vulnerable].
That why 95% of abortions occur in free-standing clinics which “are largely isolated from other medical institutions.” The result is that “the embattled status of abortion care, and its failure to become accepted as a routine part of reproductive health services.”
Interestingly she tells us that “Before 1973, people needed and accessed abortion despite it being illegal in most of the country.” She tells us that there were over a million abortions per year, a number we—and many others—have debunked a million times. “Abortionist” has the connotation it does because of “back alley abortionist,” Joffe adds. “Though this last group made up only one segment of providers, they left an indelible mark on medical colleagues at the time of nationwide legalization.”
Is that the only or even the primary reason “Nearly 50 years after legalization nationwide, the majority of obstetrician gynecologists and primary-care doctors do not provide abortion”? She cites other factors. “Beyond their discomfort with abortion providers, the largely White, male and conservative medical profession of that era was ambivalent about incorporating abortion care for other reasons.”
Meaning?
Joffe quotes a doctor who “complained at an American Medical Association (AMA) meeting in 1970, where legalization was under discussion, that ‘Legal abortion makes the patient truly the physician: she makes the diagnosis and establishes the therapy.’”
In other words, Joffe writes, “That this scenario would typically involve a female patient dictating a course of treatment to a male doctor only compounded the discomfort in an era when medical authority was almost entirely reserved for men and motherhood was considered normative for women.”
Sexism by any other name is still…
I have another reason: aborting an unborn child—a physician’s second patient—is diametrical opposed to what an ob-gyn is trained to do. Even Joffe partially concedes this truth:
Even after Roe, a physician who supported freedom of choice, commenting on the small number of doctors doing abortions in New York City, remarked: “The rest of the staff regards these doctors with esteem not markedly higher than that previously reserved for the back street abortionist.”
Take a few minutes out to read “Failing to embed abortion care in mainstream medicine made it politically vulnerable: Actions by the medical profession in the 1970s still reverberate today”. It’s worth your while.