The doctor who refused to abort

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Good for him, but does this doctor or a priest help the family AFTER he refused the abortion ?

To not perform abortion is very good. But the better is to help the women, men and children after it.

I’m praying for this children and for this family. It must be a difficult time. I hope they will find God in this time of grief and understand the doctor decision.
 
He wasn’t fired for refusing to perform an abortion, but for abuse of power and a breach of contract. Plus, the patient is suing him for malpractice (failure to diagnose acrania). See post #19 in this thread.
 
weller2 said:
He wasn’t fired for refusing to perform an abortion, but for abuse of power and a breach of contract. Plus, the patient is suing him for malpractice (failure to diagnose acrania). See post #19 in this thread.
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You’re playing word games. The “abuse of power” was refusal to allow the abortion. The “breach of contract” was the refusal to participate in the abortion process.

So you’re just flat wrong. He was indeed fired for refusing to abort the baby.

Plus, even the post you allude to does not say he failed to diagnose the problem, just that by the time the tests came back the 24 week mark had passed, beyond which abortion is illegal.

The baby was born alive and lived a few days, long enough to be baptized. Long enough to be shown love, rather than slashed to pieces and thrown in a garbage can. Big difference.

There can be no doubt the doctor did the right thing.
 
GaudeamusHodie said:
Good for him, but does this doctor or a priest help the family AFTER he refused the abortion ?

To not perform abortion is very good. But the better is to help the women, men and children after it.

I’m praying for this children and for this family. It must be a difficult time. I hope they will find God in this time of grief and understand the doctor decision.
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Is there ANY organization that does MORE for women, children and families than the Catholic Church?!?!? This post seems to judge both doctor and priest very harshly.

Peace in Christ
 
50yroldTOBfan said:
You’re playing word games. The “abuse of power” was refusal to allow the abortion.
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You would have a point if he refused to refer the woman to another hospital. (It would of course be illegal, and if you do something illegal, well, then you should expect to be fired. But hey, giving witness is not supposed to be easy.)

But here’s the problem: the auditor’s report says that he did give the patient the referral document to another hospital. (No, in Poland you cannot simply walk into a hospital and request an abortion. I mean you can, but you will be turned back unless you have the right papers.) It just happened that the other hospital refused to carry out the procedure. There are only two possibilities here:

(a) he issued the document thinking that the other hospital will carry out the abortion – if so, he was not really objecting, was he?

(b) he issued the document after artifically prolonging things and knowing that the deadline has passed – that’s malpractice
50yroldTOBfan said:
The “breach of contract” was the refusal to participate in the abortion process.
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…after having willingly signed a contract saying that the hospital will carry out abortions. The hospital was then fined for a breach of contract, incurring a $23K liability, which ultimately had to be covered by the taxpayer. This falls under mismanagement, so the mayor really had no choice other than firing him.

I have a lot of respect of conscious objectors, but exercising your conscience at taxpayer’s expense just seems… cheap.
 
GaudeamusHodie said:
Good for him, but does this doctor or a priest help the family AFTER he refused the abortion ?
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He offered the woman a place in children’s hospice, but she refused and insisted on an abortion instead. That was beside the point, however, because he should have known that the child will never leave the ICU. The real media storm in Poland started when the doctor from another hospital (the one who was ultimately supposed to do the abortion but refused because of the deadline, and ultimately delivered the child) called him out on live TV saying I invite him to come over to my hospital and see the life that he saved… He did not.

NB the other doctor is a somewhat controversial figure: he has saved a lot of children by doing complex operations in utero (including some which were originally referred to him for abortion), but he agrees to abort the ones he can’t cure. The pro-life movement hates him with passion and holds demonstrations outside his hospital.
 
So, he was fired for refusing to commit murder, but at the same time, many murders are being charged for TWO counts of murder when/ if they kill a pregnant woman…??? Go figure???

Ive never understood how they can charge someone like this, when its completely OK to kill a baby in some cases, but not in others? Murder is either a crime or not a crime, cant be both imo.

Not to mention, the killing of unborn babies is really no big deal to alot of people, but whenever there is a incident when someone kills a newborn, or even a toddler, EVERYONE is suddenly outraged, they want the killer caught right now, they bug the police until they catch the guy, they hold candlelight vigils for the kids, with 1000s showing up, etc. Am I missing something here…?? what is the apparent HUGE difference in those couple/few months or years?

Seems to me, this is proof, those in power want their cake and to eat it too!
 
mikekle said:
Not to mention, the killing of unborn babies is really no big deal to alot of people, but whenever there is a incident when someone kills a newborn, or even a toddler, EVERYONE is suddenly outraged, they want the killer caught right now, they bug the police until they catch the guy, they hold candlelight vigils for the kids, with 1000s showing up, etc. Am I missing something here…?? what is the apparent HUGE difference in those couple/few months or years?

Seems to me, this is proof, those in power want their cake and to eat it too!
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The difference, in some cases, is based on an extremely selfish view: you can’t see the unborn child or his pain.
 
mikekle said:
So, he was fired for refusing to commit murder,
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No – he was fired because he illegally forbade his subordinates to carry out abortions.

In Poland, it’s actually illegal to fire a doctor who refuses to carry out an abortion himself.
mikekle said:
Murder is either a crime or not a crime, cant be both imo.
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Of course it can be both – it depends on whether you have the right paperwork.

Cf. a state-sanctioned execution is not a murder.
 
weller2 said:
Cf. a state-sanctioned execution is not a murder.
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It is if the execution is intentionally done unjustly. Nazi Germany murdered plenty of handicapped people. It was state sanctioned and I’m sure the German paperwork was in order, but it was murder.
 
manualman said:
It is if the execution is intentionally done unjustly. Nazi Germany murdered plenty of handicapped people. It was state sanctioned and I’m sure the German paperwork was in order, but it was murder.
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Exactly! The “paperwork”, the law, can be manipulated by skillful lawyers to say whatever they want it to say.

Pro-aborts are trying to do in the Polish government the same thing our Supreme Court did in 1973. The US Supreme Court, in Roe v Wade, got their “paperwork” in order, claiming that the constitution written by our founders contained a “right to abortion” based on a newly discovered “penumbra”. It’s a bunch of hogwash, in plain English.

And it illustrates how those who want to legally justify abortion have to go through many intellectual contortions, diversions, and subtle misrepresentations to attempt to justify what is unjustifiable.
 
weller2 said:
50yroldTOBfan said:
You’re STILL playing word games. The “abuse of power” was refusal to allow the abortion.
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You would have a point if he refused to refer the woman to another hospital. I think I do have a point because according to the article, the mayor fired the doctor specifically because he did NOT give an ABORTION referral. So either the article is in error or you are. (It would of course be illegal, and if you do something illegal, well, then you should expect to be fired. But hey, giving witness is not supposed to be easy.) ***How can it be illegal if the law allows for a doctor’s conscience with regard to not participating in abortion?

You say it should not be easy. Sounds like you want him to suffer for exercising his conscience. But that contradicts the idea of having a legal right to exercise your conscience, meaning of course not being punished by losing your job as a doctor for not performing an abortion in your capacity as a doctor.

So let us be honest: either we respect the doctor’s conscience with regard to abortion or we don’t.

You cannot logically say you respect a doctor’s conscience right to refuse to participate in abortion, but yet still feel he should be fired for not participating in abortion.***
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The real problem the Polish government is running into is simply that it is not possible to force people to go against their conscience. It is one thing to say in the law that abortion is allowed. It is another to make that happen when the doctors and most of the people in administrative and all other levels do not want to kill babies or participate in that process. Even if they succeed legally, all that they will end up “accomplishing” is flushing out all pro-life people from the medical profession. Those who cave in are simply choosing their jobs over their pro-life convictions. Understandable, but still disappointing. The loser is the medical profession and the public who relies upon them for real help.
 
50yroldTOBfan said:
It is one thing to say in the law that abortion is allowed. It is another to make that happen when the doctors and most of the people in administrative and all other levels do not want to kill babies or participate in that process.
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After reading the other thread that discussed this last month in the World News section I don’t think that’s what’s happening. If one doesn’t want to participate in a process then would it not be advisable to not take a position that has an obligatory connection to the process?
 
ThinkingSapien said:
After reading the other thread that discussed this last month in the World News section I don’t think that’s what’s happening. If one doesn’t want to participate in a process then would it not be advisable to not take a position that has an obligatory connection to the process?
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“The process” we are speaking of is the practice of medicine, saving lives, healing. This is what it means to be a doctor.

The concept of freedom of conscience on this issue means you can be a doctor, practice medicine, commonly understood as “healing”, WITHOUT participating in killing, abortion.

If you make abortion “obligatory”, that obliterates the right to conscience on this issue.

Either you respect a doctor’s right not to kill, or you don’t. You seem to be saying doctors should leave the practice of medicine if they are unwilling to kill babies by abortion. Is that really what you think ?
 
50yroldTOBfan said:
“The process” we are speaking of is the practice of medicine, saving lives, healing. This is what it means to be a doctor.
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I’ve got no disagreement with that, but according to the other information his position was administrative. Had be employed as a doctor he would have had the option of saying “no.” But his position wasn’t one of a doctor.
 
ThinkingSapien said:
I’ve got no disagreement with that, but according to the other information his position was administrative. Had be employed as a doctor he would have had the option of saying “no.” But his position wasn’t one of a doctor.
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Actually he was still a doctor. If you are promoted to head a software project, you are still a software engineer, you are just managing the project instead of doing the actual work, adding administrative duties informed by your software expertise. The skill sets go together. You need the expertise as an engineer to understand what is going on in the group you are leading as a manager or administrator. Doctors and nurses often are promoted into administrative positions to head departments and hospitals too. They do not thereby lose their right to abstain from participating in abortion.
 
weller2 said:
No – he was fired because he illegally forbade his subordinates to carry out abortions.
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We are bound to protect the lives of the vulnerable, it doesn’t just stop with, “Well I’m not going to do this, but I shouldn’t interfere with the ‘right’ of others to do it”.
weller2 said:
Cf. a state-sanctioned execution is not a murder.
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It may be. Just because the state sanctions the killing of someone that doesn’t make it morally right, that doesn’t mean it is not murder. Murder is not something that is morally defined by the state. There Church teaches that there are very strict conditions under which the state may take someone’s life, anything outside of those conditions is murder (regardless of whether or not the act has been carried out in accordance with the laws of that state).
 
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