by Katherine Adams

Created on: June 01, 2009

If profit drives physicians and other medical providers to offer abortions, this debate wouldn't exist. American Medical Association lobbyists would have spent millions of dollars to advertise the arguments out of our consciousness.

If profit drives physicians and other medical providers to offer abortions, medical school classes about the procedure would be overflowing. They're not.

If profit drives physicians and other medical providers to offer abortions, we'd see a startling drop in specialties like pediatrics, psychiatry and a number of other medical specialties. That hasn't happened.

If profit drives physicians and other medical providers to offer abortions, women wouldn't have to cross state or country lines in search of someone to provide a legal service the woman has chosen to undergo. Some women still have to travel extraordinary distances to fulfill their medical needs.

The fact is this: Abortion is a difficult choice, and once the choice is made, it's getting harder and harder to find someone to provide this legal procedure. Less-controversial routes exist in medical school; who wants to make a living fighting extremists who want to control a woman's reproductive choices? You can be a surgeon or a gastroenterologist. It's simply too much of a hassle to deal with anti-abortionists, unfortunately. (Just moments ago, I saw that Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas physician who helped women choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy, was gunned down while serving as an usher in his church by an anti-abortion fanatic.)

Why would any physician today choose to provide a medical procedure that can draw hundreds of unwanted protesters to his or her office doors, shouting epithets and waving graphic photos to frighten patients away from stepping up to the sidewalk to the provider's office, much less enter the door amidst shouts of "baby killer!" and other horrible taunts?

Though abortion is a private, legal choice - just as having breast implants, tonsillectomies, chemotherapy and angiograms are - those who provide the service are targets for people who refuse to accept the reality that no one but the woman and doctor alone should make decisions regarding the patient's health.

To think that any physician believes abortion is a way to make a lot of dough and keep those Wednesdays free for golf is as ludicrous as that very stereotype. Fancy cars, Wednesday golf, and mansions are not accurate reflections of medical providers, especially in an era when uninsured

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>