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French Physicians Increasingly Reluctant to become Abortionists

Oct 4, 2011

By Dave Andrusko

Last week a Canadian pro-life site ran a fascinating story based on the ambivalent musings of a French abortionist that was published on the blog of a prominent medical journalist, Martin Winckler. I was unable to track the blog down until this weekend, but the wait was certainly worth my while.

(The site automatically translates the entry into English and I’m told by those who speak French the English version, while stilted, is good. The site is http://martinwinckler.com.)

The abortionist is female, and does not identify herself. What strikes the American reader is that, in her experience, fewer French physicians are performing abort ions and look down on those that do.

“I think this is a medical practice that is ‘tolerated’ more than we actually accept, even decades after its legalization, and even within the medical community,” she writes. “It is not uncommon to hear from fellow physicians, very unpleasant reflections, indicating the lack of openness and tolerance vis-à-vis abortion.”

A key observation/lament is that among gynecologists, “fewer and fewer among the younger generations” are performing abortions, so few  you can count them “on your fingers ” at her institution. She adds, “And I think this problem is unfortunately not unique to our center, and tends to occur almost everywhere in France .”

How do they avoid this? “They use their ‘conscience clause’ to justify their lack of involvement.”

We wrote about a similar phenomenon here (http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/08/new-study-finds-fewer-ob-gyns-willing-to-do-abortions ). The core conclusion is found in the opening sentence: “The proportion of U.S. ob-gyns who provide abortions may be lower than estimated in previous research. Access to abortion remains limited by the willingness of physicians to provide abortion services particularly in rural communities and in the South and Midwest.”

That was the conclusion of  ”Abortion Provision Among Practicing Obstetricians-Gynecologists,” a study published in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. How low?

97% of practicing ob-gyns encountered women seeking abortions, but only 14% provided them, according to a national probability sample mail survey of 1,800 practicing ob-gyns.

“Those who perform abortion tend to be female, less religious, live in urban areas, and live in the Northeast or West,” according to Stulberg et al.

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Categories: Abortion