Abortion: a threat to the medical profession

Changed attitudes toward abortion arouse interprofessional repercussions which threaten the medical profession. Inquiries in Europe revealed widespread physician opposition to abortion for non life-threatening indications, and deep divisions within the British medical profession as a result of legalization of such procedures in the U.K.The beginning of an individual's life reportedly remains uncertain despite current sophisticated instrumental techniques; therefore, hypothetical and actual life histories of a particular person are explored, illustrating that the demonstrations of Pasteur and of modern embryologists and geneticists amply verify medical tradition. Law, religion, and philosophy - however appropriately influencing physicians in other matters, and in augmenting their ethical stature - cannot, in the author's view, negate accurate observation or make proper that which tradition holds to be improper. At stake is our mutual trut, based on physicians sharing a fundamental regard for human life. If we lose that trust, we must know our consultants well, or chance placing our patients in jeopardy on account of nonmedical considerations.