Is abortion needed to protect the health of women?
Consider the following statements made by physicians:
“In more than 25 years of medical practice, I have come to learn that if a woman is healthy enough to become pregnant, she is healthy enough to complete the term –in spite of heart disease, liver disease, almost any disease. As far as I’m concerned there are no medical indications for terminating a pregnancy.” Dr. Hymie Gordon, Director of Medical Genetics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, October 15, 1974.
In 1951, Dr. Roy Heffernan, then president of the American Medical Association and Dean of Tufts Medical School stated in a presentation to the American College of Surgeons:
“Anyone who performs a therapeutic abortion is either ignorant of modern methods of treating the complications of pregnancy or unwilling to take the time to use them.”
In a letter to the Health and Welfare Committee of the Parliament of Canada in 1968, Dr. Henry Fitzgibbon provided more evidence that induced abortion was not needed for medical reasons. Dr. Fitzgibbon was at the time an obstetrician and gynecologist. He was a member of the Canadian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a Certified Specialist in Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada and a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Dr. Fitzgibbon wrote:
“As has been repeatedly pointed out at the hearings, there are no longer any valid reasons for the termination of pregnancy on medical grounds. The requests for abortion made to practising physicians are almost invariably on social grounds and as such are not covered by any of the suggested bills.”