This past summer while staffing our booth at a community event in the area, a woman engaged us in a hostile and confrontational manner, proudly producing – and flashing – a button declaring, “Abortion is Healthcare!” This ever-popular mantra utilized by abortion advocates is nothing more than a sad and desperate attempt to legitimize abortion.
It would be appropriate to ask, just what is healthcare? A generally accepted definition of healthcare is, “efforts made to maintain or restore physical, mental, or emotional well-being.” Most definitions utilize the active verbs maintain and/or restore. Clearly, the performance of an abortion, either chemically or surgically accomplishes neither, yet the supporters of abortion claim – no, they demand that we, in the pro-life community, recognize abortion as healthcare.
How could we even begin to recognize abortion as healthcare? All our lives we have heard of the Hippocratic Oath; tens of thousands have recited it. But is anyone even aware of the ancient Oath’s initial wording? Originally, those who recited it said, “I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.” Sadly, the 20th-century watered-down version of the Hippocratic Oath contained no such admonition regarding the performance of an abortion. And, what is unknown by many is that the phrase, “First, do no harm,” does not appear in the modern Hippocratic Oath. Though probably attributed to Hippocrates in his treatise, Of the Epidemics, the wisdom and validity of the saying is undeniable. Yet, here we are in the 21st century where it is patently obvious that abortion is immediately harmful to the life within the uterus. And in spite of it all, we are to somehow believe “Abortion is Healthcare.” It makes no sense, but then how much of the cultural decay and erosion of social mores does make sense? Absolutely none of it!
