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44. Abortion and the Future
-–
Medical Testimony
by
C.
Everett Koop, M.D.
Dr. Koop, former Surgeon General of the United
States and former Surgeon-in-chief at Philadelphias
Childrens Hospital, is one of the worlds most
-
prominentsurgeons. He has spent a life time studying
the attitudes and trends ofman3' view ofman from a
medical perspective.
Abortion is not a medical problem.
It
is a social
problem. Doctors have been asked to become social
executioners in order to bring about a better society -–
a far cry from the high calling to the healing art of
medicine. But have we produced a better society?
We were told in the days before the Supreme Court
abortion decisions that abortion-on-demand would
reduce child abuse. Instead, child abuse has climbed
by nearly 400 percent since 1973, even though we
have prevented the birth of some 35 MILLION
unwanted children through abortion.
We were
~old
that abortion made legal would do
away with illegal, dangerous abortions. Yet the
experience in every country, including America, where
abortion-on-demand became a legal right, is that illegal
abortions increase rather than decrease.
We were told that we would have better sexual
morality, but instead we have tremendous numbers of
teen-age pregnancies resulting from sex education
programs which deny a moral code and encourage a
hedonistic life style. Abortion is presented as a back–
up to contraceptive failure in this "do your own thing"
life style.
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