Nearly thirty years ago, I published a book, Abortion and the Private Practice of Medicine, in which I sought to understand what then was already emerging as the settled pattern of access to abortion services around the country. By the 1980s, the present pattern in which abortions are performed in specialized clinics rather than in hospitals or doctors’ offices had been established. Several writers in that decade, the sociologist Kristin Luker and the anthropologist Faye Ginsburg among them, described the politics of abortion clearly dependent on how physicians were delivering those services. Continue Reading »
Can we ever achieve consensus on divisive social issues? The just-concluded session of the Montana Legislature sent Governor Steve Bullock the “Montana Unborn Child Pain and Suffering Prevention Act” (HB 479), which would have set the anesthetization of any unborn child twenty weeks gestation or . . . . Continue Reading »
During World War II, German doctors euthanized disabled babies and adults. As Robert Jay Lifton reported in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, no one forced these doctors to kill. Many of them believed euthanasia to be a “healing treatment” that ended “unlivable” lives, liberated families from the burden of caregiving, and kept the country from “wasting” scarce resources on the lebensunwertes leben(“life unworthy of life”). Such was the fruit of years of utilitarian indoctrination and the resulting societal acceptance of eugenics ideology.At the time, Netherlander doctors were well aware that German medical ethics had devolved. Thus, when the German commander of the occupation, Arthur Seyss-Inquart (now known as “the Butcher of Holland”), commanded that Dutch medical practices adjust to the German way, Netherlander doctors courageously defied the order. Continue Reading »
On November 1, after posting a Facebook message stating, “Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer,” twenty-nine-year-old Brittany Maynard took a lethal dose of barbiturates, prescribed by an Oregon physician, and . . . . Continue Reading »
Wesley J. Smith’s article “The Coming of Medical Martyrdom” highlights a troubling trend in Canada that would see physician’s religious rights sacrificed. But it’s not just in Saskatchewan this is happening. Continue Reading »
In the winter of 1996, while I was studying the record of Jack Kevorkian’s first forty-seven physician-assisted suicides, I received a letter from a woman I did not know named Martha Wichorek. This letter was to be the first of many. Dated December 2, 1996, it read: Prof. Kaplan, Dear Friend In . . . . Continue Reading »
We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, . . . . Continue Reading »
During the past two decades, prenatal screening for fetal defects has become a standard part of nearly every pregnant woman’s medical care. Tests conducted during the first half of pregnancy are designed to detect a wide range of genetic and other disorders, and to give women the option of . . . . Continue Reading »
Koop: The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor by C. Everett Koop Random House, 342 pages, $22.50 What baleful things may befall a rugged, plain-spoken, life-affirming man when he ventures into that great bourne called The Beltway—that is the (probably unintended) theme of the autobiography . . . . Continue Reading »
Religion in the New World: The Shaping of Religious Traditions in the United States by richard e. wentz fortress press, 370 pages, $19.95 Wentz, who teaches religion at Arizona State, set out to give the general reader an accessible overview of the diversities of religion in America. He has . . . . Continue Reading »
