Doctor Elizabeth Lee Vliet is an outspoken opponent of abortion. A veteran physician, she has appeared as a guest on numerous television and radio shows, and has delivered speeches in many parts of our nation. She points out that all doctors are supposed to abide by the famous Oath of Hippocrates, composed by the celebrated Greek physician who lived from 460 to 380 B.C.
The Oath is summarized by most as simply “Do no harm.” That’s accurate, but it spells out several types of harm that a doctor is supposed to avoid. A doctor, of course, is expected to be a healer, not a hurter; a life protector, not a killer. The very existence of the Oath has helped doctors gain a reputation for nobility.
Doctors graduating from medical schools are expected to take the Oath containing less than 300 words. Some medical schools have their graduates swear the oath while assembled in a group. It contains only a few prohibitions, one of which states: “I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give a woman a pessary to produce abortion. “ (A pessary is the term used in the pre-Christian era for a device used to produce an abortion.)
Some medical schools have replaced this specific mention of abortion with. “I will perform no operation for a criminal purpose.” If, therefore, a Supreme Court decision removes the criminality of destroying life in the womb, that’s OK according to the newly written Hippocratic Oath. The clear prohibition against abortion written more than two millennia ago by the man who is rightly labeled the Father of Medicine has been superseded in numerous medical schools.
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A former director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Vliet is outraged as she notes defenders of Planned Parenthood complaining that calling attention to the group’s practices amount to “attacking women” or “blocking women’s health.” After specializing in treating women for over 25 years, she declares with stern emphasis, “Abortion is not health care. It is death, the antithesis of life.”
Yet, notes the good doctor, Planned Parenthood receives $500 million from the federal government every year. And the group performs around 330,000 abortions yearly. And, while demonstrators in places like Ferguson, Missouri, carry signs claiming “Black Lives Matter,” there are no signs noting that over 50 percent of the victims of abortion are Black or Hispanic.
Planned Parenthood was begun by Margaret Sanger in 1916. A proud eugenicist, Sanger is idolized by today’s feminists. But she stated: “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.” She termed Slavs, Latins, and Jews “human waste, a menace” to her idea of who should be allowed to live. She is credited by many as having paved the way for Hitler and his Master Race.
Secretly recorded interviews of Planned Parenthood officials discussing their marketing of body parts of aborted babies have recently evoked cries of foul play from the abortionists and their promoters. Rather than try to defend the ugliness of what they are doing, they attempt to shift the argument to the clandestine interviewers. They should not be allowed to do so.
In Congress, moves to bar supplying funds to Planned Parenthood have hit a brick wall, though some angry lawmakers intend to continue the effort to stop taxpayer funding of murder in the womb. They may have to overcome resistance from House Speaker John Boehner because one of his top assistants, Charlotte Ivancic, is the sister of a woman named Cate Dyer who happens to be CEO of Stem Express, the company that buys the organs of aborted infants from Planned Parenthood.
“Women’s health,” says Dr. Vliet, should be focusing “on life and health.” It should not be seeking ways to defend killing millions of unborn human beings. “Abortion ends the life of a baby,” says this doctor, adding that “if it isn’t a baby, then the woman isn’t pregnant.”
John F. McManus is president of The John Birch Society and publisher of The New American. This column appeared originally at the insideJBS blog and is reprinted here with permission.
