Christian Doctor On Why He Performs Abortions: ‘I Came To A Deeper Understanding Of My Spirituality’

[theHandpuppet]

Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/05/27/3441940/christian-abortion-doctor-spirituality/
Christian Doctor On Why He Performs Abortions: ‘I Came To A Deeper Understanding Of My Spirituality’
By Tara Culp-Ressler on May 27, 2014

For the first 12 years of his medical practice, Dr. Willie Parker didn’t perform abortions. A Christian from Alabama, he didn’t feel comfortable participating in the procedure. But then he changed his mind — and he credits that reversal to his faith.

“In listening to a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, I came to a deeper understanding of my spirituality, which places a higher value on compassion,” Parker recounted in an interview with the New Jersey Star-Ledger. “King said what made the good Samaritan ‘good’ is that instead of focusing on would happen to him by stopping to help the traveler, he was more concerned about what would happen to the traveler if he didn’t stop to help. I became more concerned about what would happen to these women if I, as an obstetrician, did not help them.”

Now, Parker is one of the doctors who flies in from out of state to provide care for patients at Mississippi’s last abortion clinic. He’s also one of the dwindling number of medical professionals who perform abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy — a practice that Republicans are attempting to outlaw by passing 20-week abortion bans, which are already in place in several states...

... The women who need later abortion care are disproportionately young and poor. They’re the women who lack access to health care or a family support structure, and didn’t initially realize they were pregnant. They’re the women who struggled to get to a clinic earlier because they don’t own a car or can’t take time off work. They’re the women who discover their pregnancy is doomed because their fetus has fatal defects.... MORE at link provided above.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. Rec. need one more to send to greatest. Needs the exposure.

Also please consider posting to the Christian group. Thanks.

[theHandpuppet]

3. Please feel free to cross post if you wish.

It's an important message.

[BrotherIvan]

2. A Christian learning compassion

What a difference that would make. But our Khristians are so hateful. Gandhi said it best: I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.

He is actually saving lives!

[cui bono]

4. k n r

[PatrynXX]

5. have issues with people I know since I was really young

on this anti abortion thing. I'm not pro abortion. I am however hoping someday they'll come into the meaning of caring about the unborn and offer to care for the mother to carry it to term but they never do this. it's all forced. hence going after Planned Parenthood. they don't care

[Thinkingabout]

6. In talking one day to an anti-abortionist I ask the question "If your 12 year old

Granddaughter was raped would you want to punish the granddaughter further by forcing her to have a baby conceived through rape?". The answer was no, I told her if all abortions was made illegal young victims of rape would not have a clean professional place in which to have an abortion. There are other reasons to have abortions, I leave that choice to the pregnant woman.

[Control-Z]

7. From comments:

"There are some horrendous birth defects not testable until after 20 weeks. One of them is your baby being born without a brain. Forcing a woman to carry to full term under these circumstances is inhumane."


Reply · "Many people survive this defect and eventually become Republicans."

Reply · "you win the internet!"

[elleng]

8. 'higher value on compassion'

No kidding.

[Warpy]

9. Christians, especially ministers, were in the front lines when the fight to legalize abortion

was happening in the late 60s and early 70s. The ministers were sick of losing parishoners to back alley butchery. They knew abortions were going to happen and had a huge stake in making them safe and legal. Most people knew at least one woman who had an illegal abortion, it was one of those things women would whisper about when the men were in the kitchen, close to the cold beer, discussing sports.

That's what is being forgotten now when the religious right is trying to convince people that their lies are the only moral road and we need to send desperate women back to the butchers.

Dr. Parker is only being true to the sort of Christianity that was most common before it was hijacked by televangelists, the Christianity that even atheists like myself respected and worked with instead of against.

[theHandpuppet]

10. They also realized that the women who suffered most were the poor

I really fear now for the women in states where the number of clinics, thanks to the ceaseless war on women waged by the religious right and their allies, has been reduced to virtually nothing. Do these hatemongers think that contraception and abortion will end because they outlaw any decent facility where women can go? Well of course they know better but they just DON'T CARE. Rich women will still have access to abortion but poor girls and women will die. They will die when in desperation they try to perform abortions on themselves or end up bleeding to death or of sepsis from some back alley abortion. Perhaps they will die from an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy or complication that would otherwise have been caught early had they access to health care facilities. When they are denied free contraception, something as simple as condoms which they used to get, there will a rise in STDs, HIV/AIDS and of course, even more unplanned pregnancy. The little girl who is raped and finds herself pregnant will have nowhere to turn.

Oh, I know who's going to hell all right. And it's not these women.