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July
1, 2002, 1:00 p.m.
Bloomberg’s
Gift
Mandatory
abortion training arrives in NYC public hospitals.
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ew York City
mayor Mike Bloomberg "will be a pro-choice hero," the Village
Voice promised shortly after his inauguration earlier this year. And
hero he is — not just to the abortion advocates in New York, but
to the whole industry. Bloomberg may have just saved abortion in America.
Remarkably, abortion is on the decline. One of the reasons: Younger doctors
don't want to have anything to do with it. For some, perhaps, it has something
to do with the duty of a physician — to do no harm and all. For others,
it's just not something they're willing to do anything extra for. "On
a 120-hour-a-week schedule, there's just not any energy to pursue an elective,"
Lois Backus, executive director of Medical Students for Choice, told the
Associated Press recently.
More often, though, the explanation offered by abortion advocates and
politicians is that med students fear for their lives. For them, keeping
away from abortion is simply a safety concern. They remember stories like
that of Bernard Slepian, shot dead by crazed murderers hypocritically
calling themselves pro-life.
But just ask the National Abortion Federation, no pro-life organization,
and you'll learn violence against abortion providers is on the decline.
In fact, since Slepian's unjustifiable murder, not one abortion provider
has been killed in the U.S.
Mayor Bloomberg's gift to New York City is a guarantee that the numbers
of abortion practitioners will increase. Starting July 1, doctors trained
in New York City public hospitals — the nation's largest public hospital
system (it trains one-seventh of the nation's doctors) — will be
required to learn the art of abortion. It was previously an elective.
About 2,000 doctors currently perform abortions in the U.S. With more
than half of them over 50, mandatory abortion training has long been on
the wish list of the National Abortion Rights Action League (to which
Bloomberg has been a financial contributor) and now it is law. Their hope
is that other cities will quickly follow suit.
A Washington Post writer, upset about RU-486 not catching on with
women, recently editorialized on Bloomberg's abortion push:
[N]o one should assume that the provider shortage has gone away. If
anything, RU-486, and the response to it, point out the need for doctors
comfortable with abortion procedure. Proponents should keep looking
for ways to produce them: A good model is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's
move to require abortion training as part of ob-gyn residencies in the
city's public hospitals. More than a new pill, this initiative gets
at the root of the shortage: a generation of doctors who have not seen
the effects of illegal abortion and who often find in medical school
that abortion training is unavailable, nonmandatory or inconvenient.
Under the Bloomberg plan there will be a conscience clause for residents
who don't want to do abortion, as there should be. But this sort of
effort, if brought to bear elsewhere, might help produce a generation
of doctors qualified to provide abortion, surgical and medical, ably
and safely.
While proposals like the Human Life Amendment and a ban on partial-birth
abortion have proved near-impossible to enact in law, the lack of interest
in abortion on the part of doctors — and the aging of those practitioners
who are most passionate about it — has increasingly been considered
a sign of hope by those opposed to abortion. The pro-abortion groups,
meanwhile, are in a tizzy. But if Bloomberg's move starts a trend, it
could revive the practice of abortion in America.
Or not. The new training mandate allows for a religious/conscience exemption
for those with moral qualms about abortion. And for the rest, a taste
of abortion — as contrasted with the joys of delivering fully live
children (who, not too long before, could have been legally killed) —
could well turn new doctors off to the deadly procedure, breaking the
hearts of abortion activists. In a 1998 piece in the New York Times
Magazine ruing the decline in doctors below the age of retirement
who are willing to perform abortions, the reporter noted with dismay the
attitude of OB-GYN residents who, though perfectly free to do them, still
don't want to touch abortion. "Some of them," Jack Hitt wrote,
"have the kind of revulsion you expect to find among abortion protesters."
"If you do 12 in a row, it can make you feel bad," the chief
resident said. "No matter how pro-choice you are, it makes you
feel low." Another resident said, "I guess I never realized
I would find it as unpleasant as I do. I really don't enjoy it [at]
all. It's not a rewarding thing to do."
In other words, NARAL, don't break open the champagne just yet.
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