Facts for thought

In 1871 the AMA recommended dealing with medical abortionists in the following manner:
"These men should be marked as Cain was marked; they should be made the outcasts of society . . . respectable men should cease to consult with them, should cease to speak to them, should cease to notice them except with contempt . . . Resolved, That we repudiate and denounce the conduct of abortionists, and that we will hold no intercourse with them professionally or otherwise, and that we will, whenever an opportunity presents, guard and protect the public against the machinations of these characters by pointing out the physical and moral ruin which follows in their wake."
The American Medical Association on Abortion: An Anatomy of Contrasting Policy Statements

————When Does Human Life Begin?————
1871 — "No other doctrine appears to be consonant with reason or physiology but that which admits the embryo to possess vitality from the very moment of conception."
1967-70 The AMA abortion policy statements of 1967 and 1970 include no references to the scientific fact that human life begins at conception.
————What is Abortion?————
1859 — "The slaughter of countless children; such unwarrantable destruction of human life."
1967 — "The interruption of pregnancy; the induced termination of pregnancy."
1871 — "The work of destruction; the wholesale destruction of unborn infants."
1970 — "A medical procedure."
———What Should the Ethics of Abortion Be?———
1871 — "Thou shalt not kill. This commandment is given to all without exception . . .it matters not at what stage of development his victim may have arrived."
1967 — "This is a personal and moral consideration which in all cases must be faced according to the dictates of the conscience of the patient and her physician."
———Who Should Perform Abortions?———
1871 — "It will be unlawful and unprofessional for any physician to induce abortion."
1970 — "Abortion should be performed only by a duly licensed physician."
———Who Are Physician Abortionists?———
1871 — "Men who cling to a noble profession only to dishonor it; false brethren; educated assassins; modern Herods; the executioners."
1967 — "Conscientious practitioners; conscientious physicians."
——What Should Be Done to Physician Abortionists?——
1871 — "These men should be marked as Cain was marked; they should be made the outcasts of society."
1970 — They should be permitted to perform as long as they take place "in an accredited hospital."
W. Brennan, The Abortion Holocaust, Landmark Press, 1983, p. 191

Dr. Leon Alexander, an authority writing after the Nuremberg trials, said it well, and the parallel with the creeping deterioration of today's societal ethics is telling. "The beginnings were at first merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually, the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitable sick." L. Alexander, "Medical Science Under Dictatorship," New England Jour. Med., vol. 241, July 14, 1949, pp. 39-47


A very early admission of the agenda (in the U.S): "The reverence of each and every human life has been a keystone of Western medicine, and is the ethic which has caused physicians to try to preserve, protect, repair, prolong, and enhance every human life. "Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced, it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception, and is continuous, whether intra- or extra-uterine, until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because, while a new ethic is being accepted, the old one has not yet been rejected." Editorial, Jour. CA State Med. Assoc., Sept. 1970

Rationale
THEN "A doctor may interrupt a pregnancy when it ‘threatens the life or health of the mother [and] an unborn child that is likely to present hereditary and transmissible defects may be destroyed.’" (German Penal Code and Hamburg Eugenics Court, 1933)
TODAY "A licensed physician is justified in terminating a pregnancy if he believes that pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother or that the child would be born with grave physical or mental defects." (American Law Institute Model Penal Code, 1962)
THEN "Only persons of ‘German or related blood’ can be citizens; this does not include Jews." (Reich Citizenship Law, 1935)
TODAY "The word ‘person’ as used in the fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn." ( U.S. Supreme Court, Roe vs. Wade, 1973)
THEN "The authority of physicians is enlarged to include the responsibility for according a ‘mercy death [to] incurables.’ " (Hitler’s Euthanasia Order, Sept. 1939
TODAY "The abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently and primarily a medical decision and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician." (U.S. Supreme Court, Roe vs. Wade, 1973)
Obedience to Authority
THEN "The accused did not act wrongly because they were covered by law [and] were carrying out the laws of the land." (Hadamar Euthanasia Hospital Trial, 1945)
TODAY "I did nothing which was illegal, immoral or bad medicine. Everything I did was in accordance with law." (Dr. Kenneth C. Edelin, 1975)
THEN "The physician is merely an instrument as in the case of an officer who receives an order." (Dr. Karl Brandt, Doctors’ Trial, 1947)
TODAY "The physician is only the instrument of her decision." (Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, 1974)
Subhumanity of the Victims
THEN "The Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars personify a repulsive yet characteristic subhumanity." (Dr. August Hirt, 1942)
TODAY "For the first four and one-half months the fetus is subhuman and relatively close to a piece of tissue." (Amitai Etzioni, Ph.D., 1976)
THEN "It had nothing to do with humanity — it was a mass. I rarely saw them as individuals. It was always a huge mass." (Franz Stangl, former commandant of Treblinka, 1971)
TODAY "What is aborted is a protoplasmic mass and not a real, live grown-up individual." (Drs. Walter Char & John McDermott, 1972)
THEN "Whenever Jews are left to themselves they bring brutal misery and depravity. They are pure parasites." (Adolf Hitler, 1943)
TODAY "A parasite can commit murder, what attention has Catholic thinking or the law given to the fetus’s capacity to murder its mother?" (Dr. Natalie Shainess, 1968
THEN "If it is now pointed out that the Jew is human, I then reject that totally." (Antisemitic speech, Reichstag, 1895)
TODAY "It is a wild contention that new-born babies are persons." (Dr. Michael Tooley, 1972)
The Language of Killing
THEN "Fifty-nine thousand persons were evacuated by July 31." (Warsaw, Poland, 1942)
TODAY "The uterus was evacuated." (Dr. David Edelman & Colleagues, 1974)
THEN "The Baron de Hirsch ghetto would have to be emptied." (Max Merten, 1943
TODAY "The uterine cavity was emptied." (Dr. A.K. Mukerjee, 1973)
THEN "The removal of the Jewish element." (Hans Frank, 1943)
TODAY "Remove the products of conception." (Dr. Thomas Dillon & Colleagues, 1974)THEN "The treatment was administered to the children of the Haar-Eglfing Institution." (Dr. Pfannmuller, 1945)
TODAY "Abortion as treatment for the sexually transmitted disease of unwanted pregnancy." (Dr. Willard Cates & Colleagues, 1976)
THEN "The method of injection is a completely painless method." (Dr. Adolf Wahlmann, 1945)
TODAY "Evacuate the conceptus painlessly within 45 seconds." (Dr. Harvey Karman, 1972)
Experimental Exploitation
THEN "If you are going to kill all these people, at least take the brains out so that the material could be utilized." (Testimony of Dr. Julius Hallervordan, 1947
TODAY "In the case of abortion the fetus cannot be ‘helped’ by being experimented upon since it is doomed to death anyhow, but perhaps its death can be ennobled . . . when the research has as its objective the saving of lives (or the reduction of defects) of other wanted fetuses." (Drs. Willard Gaylin & Mark Lappe, 1975
THEN "The victims of this Buchenwald typhus test did not suffer in vain and did not die in vain . . . people were saved by these experiments." (Dr. Gebhard Rose, Doctors’ Trial, 1947)
TODAY "With changes in the abortion laws fetuses as valuable research material is on the increase." (Dr. Leroy Jackson, 1975)