Tag Archives: hippocratic oath

The Hippocratic Oath and Planned Parenthood used to be explicitly anti-abortion

So what happened?

Science is clear that life begins at conception.  Just go read any secular embryology textbook.  Or use basic logic: What else would two human beings create other than a new human being? The pro-abortion forces have had to shift to poorly conceived philosophical arguments to justify the killing of unborn human beings. The alleged pro-science crowd lies and says they don’t know when life begins or what a female is.

But what did doctors and other reproductive professionals such as Planned Parenthood think about abortion before recent scientific discoveries?  Did they think the unborn were just blobs of tissue and that abortion was morally benign?  Let’s see.

First, a look at the original Hippocratic Oath.  The removal of the prohibitions against abortion in the latest revisions of the oath was done in our more “enlightened” scientific days.

The Hippocratic Oath is an oath traditionally taken by physicians pertaining to the ethical practice of medicine. It is widely believed that the oath was written by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, in the 4th century BC, or by one of his students. It is thus usually included in the Hippocratic Corpus. Classical scholar Ludwig Edelstein proposed that the oath was written by Pythagoreans, a theory that has been questioned due to the lack of evidence for a school of Pythagorean medicine. Although mostly of historical and traditional value, the oath is considered a rite of passage for practitioners of medicine, although it is not obligatory and no longer taken up by all physicians.

The original oath:

I swear by Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath.
To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.

To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death.

Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.

But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.

I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.

All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.

Also, consider that at late as 1964 even Planned Parenthood was publicly pro-life:

Is it [birth control] an abortion?

Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the meaning of life.

There you have it! Straight from the experts at Planned Parenthood. Read that again and try not to drown in the morbid irony.

So Planned Parenthood used to teach that abortion kills a baby and poses medical risks to the mother, and the “unenlightened” doctors viewed abortion as immoral for a couple thousand years.

What did Planned Parenthood and other medical practitioners learn since the early 1960s that caused them to change their stance on what abortion really does?  What do they know that Hippocrates et al didn’t know 2,000 years earlier?

Could it be scientific advancements such as sonograms and 4-D ultrasounds? No, those do more than anything to promote the pro-life view. Technology is the enemy of pro-legalized-abortionists and it always will be. They might have gotten away with the “blob of tissue” argument in the 60’s, or 400 years B.C., but not today. No, wait, even back then the experts knew better than to believe that silly lie! It took a couple thousand years to convince people to believe the unbelievable.

Could it be the studies showing the impact of abortion on women? No. Despite major political pressure, more studies continue to show the adverse impact abortion has on women – both physically and emotionally.

No, even non-Jewish and non-Christian types like Hippocrates and Planned Parenthood used to know that abortion was wrong.  It takes a lot of effort and deliberate ignorance of scientific facts to rationalize otherwise.

The latest Terri & Sherri award goes to Tony Campolo

I update this post whenever a new “evangelical Christian” officially caves and comes out publicly supporting the LGBTQX agenda.  

simpsons-terri-sherri.jpgIn a move that should have surprised no one, Tony Campolo has come out in favor of “same-sex marriage” after much prayer/reflection/blah/blah/blah.  It reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where the twins Terri and Sherri are speaking to Lisa:

Isn’t it amazing that the same day you got a pool is the same day we realized we liked you?  The timing works out great, don’t you think?

For Tony Campolo and other people bailing on biblical truths, it goes like this:

Isn’t it amazing that the same day God told me that he changed his rules on marriage it made me more popular?  The timing works out great, don’t you think?

By most accounts Campolo has been in the pro-LGBTQX camp for a long time, but he decided that now was the optimum time to make it official.  It is the “squishy evangelical Christian” version of 30 pieces of silver.

There were already lots of things wrong with Campolo’s theology.  This is just an official nail in the coffin.  His post describes what I had heard already, namely that his wife has guided his perverse, hateful theology.  What a shameful, pathetic excuse for a man and a husband.

—–

I’m running this again in (dis)honor of Andy Stanley caving to the LGBTQX agenda right when it profited him the most.  Via Megachurch pastor rejects his father’s bigotry: Jesus would want you to bake a gay wedding cake:

There is not consensus in this room when it comes to same-sex attraction; there is not consensus in this room when it comes to gay marriage.

Those are the weasel words of a wimpy and/or false teacher who will go full pro-LGBTQX in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Gee, just because one group disagrees with something we can’t know the truth? Even Stanley doesn’t use that standard in any of his other quotes.

If you really love people you will tell them the truth. The Bible couldn’t be more clear. Bible-believing Christians and even two out of the three types of pro-gay people* (religious or not) can see these truths:

  • 100% of the verses addressing homosexual behavior describe it as sin in the clearest and strongest possible terms.
  • 100% of the verses referring to God’s ideal for marriage involve one man and one woman.
  • 100% of the verses referencing parenting involve moms and dads with unique roles (or at least a set of male and female parents guiding the children).
  • 0% of 31,173 Bible verses refer to homosexual behavior in a positive or even benign way or even hint at the acceptability of homosexual unions of any kind. There are no exceptions for “committed” relationships.
  • 0% of 31,173 Bible verses refer to LGBT couples parenting children.

Having said that, I believe that Christians should support and encourage those who are fighting same-sex attraction. And no one needs to grandstand on the issue before getting to the Good News of the cross.

Here are some more weasel words from Stanley. Yes, people claiming the name of Christ should do less of those things, but isn’t it convenient when he throws all Christians under the bus to curry favor with the LGBTQX extremists?

If all the Christians for just one year, would quit looking at porn, would quit smoking weed, would quit having premarital sex, would quit committing adultery, would pay their taxes, and every church just foster one kid — in one year our nation would feel different. . .

Yeah, and if all the false teachers shut up for a year it would feel different as well.

It is illuminating how the non-Christians commenting there agree with Stanley. Go figure. Churchgoers who support “same-sex marriage” have nearly identical views to the world. It shows who their real father is.

1 John 2:15-16 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

Jude 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Finally, as Erick Erickson pointed out, note in the article how Andy’s father’s church had to be protected from the LGBTQX people and not the other way around.

—–

simpsons-terri-sherri.jpgIn a move that should have surprised no one, Rob Bell has come out in favor of “same-sex marriage.”  It reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where the twins Terri and Sherri are speaking to Lisa:

Isn’t it amazing that the same day you got a pool is the same day we realized we liked you?  The timing works out great, don’t you think?

For Rob Bell and other people bailing on biblical truths, it goes like this:

Isn’t it amazing that the same day God told me that he changed his rules on marriage it made me more popular?  The timing works out great, don’t you think?

The link has the video of him explaining his “new” views (Poison Control recommends watching it if you are out of Syrup of Ipecac) where he not-so-subtly undermined the word of God and said how we need to get with the world’s changes, because God is doing something new blah blah blah.  He says we should work on the “real” problems, as if the problem of saving people from sin isn’t real.

Once again someone who mocks what God said in his word wants us to believe that God is telling him all his new ideas and changes.  Right.  I hope that all the youth groups that showed his videos are repenting.

hear from God

Here’s a graph I made for Rob (the inspiration came from the World’s Best Sunday School Teacher)::

bell2

The liberal “church” has changed in the same ways culture has: Pro-legalized abortion, anti-parental notification laws, pro-gay marriage, pro-handing out condoms to kids, etc.

Think about this: Non-believers created the anti-abortion Hippocratic Oath and it took Satan 2,500 years to convince pagans to discard it.  Then it took another 15 minutes for theological Liberals to go pro-abortion.

Isn’t it amazing?  What great timing!  The liberal church realized it had been wrong on these important topics for nearly two thousand years, and came to that conclusion at virtually the same time as the secular culture.  That makes the world like them more, I suppose.

They also decided it was too embarrassing to believe in miracles, the authority of scripture, the exclusivity of Jesus, etc.  Or did that come first?

Thankfully, many churches in the West aren’t buying it and most of the churches outside the West aren’t either.  The first time I was in Kenya one of the full-time missionaries, a doctor from England, kept saying how the Kenyans were really disappointed in the U.S. when they heard about churches supporting gay “marriages.”   It wasn’t like they were thinking, “Gee, those brilliant Westerners know everything, perhaps we should follow them.”  It was more like, “Whoa, what are they thinking?!”

* The three general types of pro-gay theology people:

1. “The Bible says homosexuality is wrong but it isn’t the word of God.” (Obviously non-Christians)

2. “The Bible says it is wrong but God changed his mind and is only telling the theological Left.” (Only about 10 things wrong with that.)

3. “The Bible is the word of God but you are just misunderstanding it” (Uh, no, not really.)

Rob Bell, Andy Stanley, Terri and Sherri from The Simpsons, and perfect timing

I’m running this again in (dis)honor of Andy Stanley caving to the LGBTQX agenda right when it profited him the most.  Via Megachurch pastor rejects his father’s bigotry: Jesus would want you to bake a gay wedding cake:

There is not consensus in this room when it comes to same-sex attraction; there is not consensus in this room when it comes to gay marriage.

Those are the weasel words of a wimpy and/or false teacher who will go full pro-LGBTQX in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Gee, just because one group disagrees with something, we can’t know the truth? Even Stanley doesn’t use that standard in any of his other quotes.

If you really love people, you will tell them the truth. The Bible couldn’t be more clear. Bible-believing Christians and even two out of the three types of pro-gay people* (religious or not) can see these truths:

  • 100% of the verses addressing homosexual behavior describe it as sin in the clearest and strongest possible terms.
  • 100% of the verses referring to God’s ideal for marriage involve one man and one woman.
  • 100% of the verses referencing parenting involve moms and dads with unique roles (or at least a set of male and female parents guiding the children).
  • 0% of 31,173 Bible verses refer to homosexual behavior in a positive or even benign way or even hint at the acceptability of homosexual unions of any kind. There are no exceptions for “committed” relationships.
  • 0% of 31,173 Bible verses refer to LGBT couples parenting children.

Having said that, I believe that Christians should support and encourage those who are fighting same-sex attraction. And no one needs to grandstand on the issue before getting to the Good News of the cross.

Here are some more weasel words from Stanley. Yes, people claiming the name of Christ should do less of those things, but isn’t it convenient when he throws all Christians under the bus to curry favor with the LGBTQX extremists?

If all the Christians for just one year, would quit looking at porn, would quit smoking weed, would quit having premarital sex, would quit committing adultery, would pay their taxes, and every church just foster one kid — in one year our nation would feel different. . .

Yeah, and if all the false teachers shut up for a year it would feel different as well.

It is illuminating how the non-Christians commenting there agree with Stanley. Go figure. Churchgoers who support “same-sex marriage” have nearly identical views to the world. It shows who their real father is.

1 John 2:15-16 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

Jude 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Finally, as Erick Erickson pointed out, note in the article how Andy’s father’s church had to be protected from the LGBTQX people and not the other way around.

—–

simpsons-terri-sherri.jpgIn a move that should have surprised no one, Rob Bell has come out in favor of “same-sex marriage.”  It reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where the twins Terri and Sherri are speaking to Lisa:

Isn’t it amazing that the same day you got a pool is the same day we realized we liked you?  The timing works out great, don’t you think?

For Rob Bell and other people bailing on biblical truths, it goes like this:

Isn’t it amazing that the same day God told me that he changed his rules on marriage it made me more popular?  The timing works out great, don’t you think?

The link has the video of him explaining his “new” views (Poison Control recommends watching it if you are out of Syrup of Ipecac). In it, he not-so-subtly undermines the word of God and says how we need to get with the world’s changes because God is doing something new, blah blah blah. He thinks we should work on the “real” problems as if the problem of saving people from sin isn’t real.

Once again, someone who mocks what God said in his word wants us to believe that God is telling him all his new ideas and changes.  Right.  I hope that all the youth groups that showed his videos are repenting.

hear from God

Here’s a graph I made for Rob (the inspiration came from the World’s Best Sunday School Teacher)::

bell2

The liberal “church” has changed in the same ways culture has: Pro-legalized abortion, anti-parental notification laws, pro-gay marriage, pro-handing out condoms to kids, etc.

Think about this: Non-believers created the anti-abortion Hippocratic Oath, and it took Satan 2,500 years to convince pagans to discard it.  Then it took another 15 minutes for theological Liberals to go pro-abortion.

Isn’t it amazing?  What great timing!  The liberal church realized it had been wrong on these important topics for nearly two thousand years, and came to that conclusion at virtually the same time as the secular culture.  That makes the world like them more, I suppose.

They also decided it was too embarrassing to believe in miracles, the authority of scripture, the exclusivity of Jesus, etc.  Or did that come first?

Thankfully, many churches in the West aren’t buying it and most of the churches outside the West aren’t either.  The first time I was in Kenya, one of the full-time missionaries, a doctor from England, kept saying how the Kenyans were really disappointed in the U.S. when they heard about churches supporting gay “marriages.”   It wasn’t like they thought, “Gee, those brilliant Westerners know everything, perhaps we should follow them.”  It was more like, “Whoa, what are they thinking?!”

* The three general types of pro-gay theology people:

1. “The Bible says homosexuality is wrong, but it isn’t the word of God.” (Obviously non-Christians)

2. “The Bible says it is wrong, but God changed his mind and is only telling the theological Left.” (Only about 10 things wrong with that.)

3. “The Bible is the word of God, but you are just misunderstanding it” (Uh, no, not really.)

Roundup

What to do when you betray Jesus

Judas and Peter show us there are four options:

  • Like the religious leaders, you can focus all your energies on the things you don’t like about other people. Instead of dealing with their own issues, they obsessed over getting Jesus.

  • You can try to make up for your mistakes, like Judas giving back the money he had received. The problem is, of course, that you can’t un-ring a bell, and you can’t undo your sins.

  • You can give in to despair, stew in your guilt, and let it eat you alive, as Judas did.

  • Or you can repent, as Peter did. You can bring your sin before God for mercy and put things in place that will help you change the way you live.

It is morbidly ironic that nearly all the people posting the red equal signs for the faux “equality” of “same-sex marriage” are pro-abortion.  They fight aggressively to turn society upside down for 0.1% of the country (3% of people are lesbian/gay but less than 3% of those want to get married), but they ignore the equal protection for unborn and unwanted human beings.

‘Gay Marriage’ and Religious Freedom Are Not Compatible — please read it all.

As long as there are still Christians who actually follow Christ and uphold his word, a vast amount of people around the world — never mind Islam — will never ever see gay marriage as anything other than a legal encroachment of God’s intent.

So those Christians must be silenced. The left exerted a great deal of energy to convince everyone that the gay lifestyle is an alternative form of normal. It then has exerted a great deal of energy convincing people that because the gay lifestyle is just another variation of normal, gay marriage must be normalized.

Meanwhile, those Christians are out there saying it is not normal and are refusing to accept it as normal because of silly God dared to say marriage is a union between a man and woman.

Any Christian who refuses to recognize that man wants to upend God’s order will have to be driven from the national conversation. They will be labeled bigots and ultimately criminals.

Already we have seen florists, bakers, and photographers suffer because they have refused to go along with the cultural shift toward gay marriage. There will be more.

Once the world decides that real marriage is something other than natural or Godly, those who would point it out must be silenced and, if not, punished. The state must be used to do this. Consequently, the libertarian pipe dream of getting government out of marriage can never ever be possible.

Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God’s own established plan. In some places this is already happening.

Christians should, starting yesterday, work on a new front. While we should not stop the fight to preserve marriage, and we may be willing to compromise on civil unions, we must start fighting now for protections for religious objectors to gay marriage.

Richard Dawkins defends the moral goodness of infanticide and adultery — what charming and inconsistent sentiments from the “you can be good without God” leader.

ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NPR and PBS Ignore Gosnell’s Abortion Horrors — This “doctor” severed the spinal cords of babies born alive, among other horrors, yet the media ignores it.  If you only watch the mainstream media you are hopelessly misinformed.

People who grew up in Nazi Germany or under Communism know the score — Keep Your Guns; Buy More Guns

Kitty Werthmann, who lived under both Nazism and Soviet communism, offers excellent advice regarding firearms (see video at link)

Registration is the first step in confiscation. After what happened in Europe last century, we won’t be able to say we didn’t know how it would play out.

Jim Carrey had a very un-funny bit about gun control.  I’d be shocked if he wasn’t pro-abortion like every other pro-gun control Liberal.

‘Cold Dead Hand’ is abt u heartless moXXerf%XXkers unwilling 2 bend 4 the safety of our kids.Sorry if you’re offended

Yeah, because pro-aborts are all about safety for kids.

Hate speech from the CDC — CDC: risk of HIV 150 times greater for gay men than for heterosexual men.   I wonder how long it will be until they stop publishing those statistics?  Seems to me the loving thing would be to warn against such behaviors.  As Ann Coulter asks, if smokers pay higher insurance premiums then why not gays?

Are the Polyamorists Next in Line for Marriage Equality?  The LGBTQ people know not to move too fast.  They could care less about the polyamorists but realize that the “slippery slope” isn’t a fallacy in this case.  It is a cliff, not a slope.  Validating “same-sex unions” isn’t tweaking the definition of marriage, it is saying that marriage is whatever someone wants to call it.  The polyamorists and other perverts will use the same arguments that the gay lobby has.

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post last week about some polyamory activists in the Unitarian-Universalist Church.  It seems the folks fighting for so-called “marriage equality” would prefer the polyamorists keep quiet.  The last thing the same-sex marriage advocate want is for the real marriage activists to say, “I told you so.”  The article cites a group called Unitarian-Universalist for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA).  This group defines polyamory as the “practice of loving and relating intimately with more than one other person at a time.”  Among the goals of the UUPA is to have their relationships blessed by a minister.

As Stan reminds us, the Hippocratic Oath was written 500 years before Jesus came to earth yet it strongly and clearly opposed abortion.  Abortion is so clearly wrong that it took Satan 2,500 years to convince non-believers that it was, in a morbid irony, a “human right,”  and only a few years more than that to convince much of the church.  The fake part.

Also consider that at late as 1964 even Planned Parenthood was publicly anti-abortion:

Is it [birth control] an abortion?

Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the meaning of life.

There you have it! Straight from the experts at Planned Parenthood.

This picture makes a good point, but it is actually much worse than this.  Gun training programs are truthful in sharing the real risks.  Planned Parenthood deliberately gives a false sense of security and pretends that people will follow their ridiculous recommendations.

The Hunger Games and running on the fumes of Christianity

We went to a sold-out 10:30 a.m. showing of The Hunger Games today.  Apparently this is a popular movie.  My wife is a librarian and likes to keep up with young adult literature.  I haven’t read the books or any reviews of the movie, so what I’ll offer here may have completely missed the point (that tends to happen when I analyze anything artistic — remind me to tell you about my paper on a poem back in freshman English and how much my professor  . . . er, uh . . . loved it.)

Without offering any spoilers about anything not shown in the first 60 seconds of the movie, it was a bit like The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.  Kent Brockman of The Simpsons summarized that in a pithy way: “A chlling tale of conformity gone mad.”  People are randomly selected to die to offer some sort of benefit for the greater good of the community.  Hey, what could go wrong with that?!

Side note: I had a fun 10th grade English teach that had us recreate the killing from The Lottery, only with wads of paper instead or rocks.  One person was randomly selected from each row, then one of those people was picked to stand in the corner while everyone threw paper wads at her.  Good times.

Back to the movie.  I assume that it was some sort of cautionary tale about what might happen.  But I didn’t see it as futuristic, but historical (think Roman gladiators and feeding Christians to the lions) and contemporary (think video games, movies, ultimate fighting and, to a lesser extent, pro football).

One of the main mistakes any society makes is to ignore the reality of original sin.  They think we’ve evolved, when we’ve done no such thing.  Exhibit A: The ancients who wrote the Hippocratic Oath knew abortion was wrong. It was only in our “enlightened” times that we’ve rationalized away the immorality of killing innocent but unwanted human beings. Hey, even Planned Parenthood used to be pro-life.

So I didn’t see movies like The Hunger Games as warnings about what we might do.  We are already doing all sorts of horrific things and are blinded to their evil.

The only reason we haven’t descended further into mayhem is that we are running on the fumes of Christianity, but those are dissipating as I write this.  No matter how hard they try, secularists cannot ground morality in their molecules-to-man worldview.

Everyone knows moral laws exist (see Romans 2-3) but so many people deny God in their rebellion against him (see Romans 1).  When you reject God then, as the saying goes, everything is permissible.  People may deny Christianity, but if they understood history they would realize it under girds the few moral truths they have left (even though they wildly misinterpret those truths).

My prayer is that believers will abandon the prosperity gospel, theologically liberal (read: fake) churches and other falsehoods and man up to share the truth of the real Gospel in love.

P.S. I enjoyed the movie.  Good acting and story line.  Now we need to see October Baby and I will have fulfilled my quota of two visits to the movie theater per year.

P.S.S. I have now read a couple reviews of the movie.  Good review of the movie from a Christian perspective here.  Warning: Plot spoilers.  I also noted from other reviews that the movie works better if you’ve read the books.  I realize that is sort of a “duh” statement, but some of the criticisms of the movie wouldn’t apply to the book.

The Hippocratic Oath and abortion

Science is quite clear that life begins at conception.  Just go read any secular embryology textbook.  The pro-abortion forces have had to shift to poorly conceived philosophical arguments to justify the killing of unborn human beings.

But what did doctors and other reproductive professionals such as Planned Parenthood think about abortion before recent scientific discoveries?  Did they think the unborn were just blobs of tissue and that abortion was morally benign?  Let’s see.

First, a look at the original Hippocratic Oath.  The removal of the prohibitions against abortion in the latest revisions of the oath were done in our more “enlightened” scientific days.

The Hippocratic Oath is an oath traditionally taken by physicians pertaining to the ethical practice of medicine. It is widely believed that the oath was written by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, in the 4th century BC, or by one of his students. It is thus usually included in the Hippocratic Corpus. Classical scholar Ludwig Edelstein proposed that the oath was written by Pythagoreans, a theory that has been questioned due to the lack of evidence for a school of Pythagorean medicine. Although mostly of historical and traditional value, the oath is considered a rite of passage for practitioners of medicine, although it is not obligatory and no longer taken up by all physicians.

The original oath:

I swear by Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath.
To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.

To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death.

Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.

But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.

I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.

All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.

Also consider that at late as 1964 even Planned Parenthood was publicly pro-life:

Is it [birth control] an abortion?

Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the meaning of life.

There you have it! Straight from the experts at Planned Parenthood. Read that again and try not to drown in the irony.

So Planned Parenthood used to teach that abortion kills a baby and poses medical risks to the mother, and the “unenlightened” doctors viewed abortion as immoral for a couple thousand years.

What did Planned Parenthood and other medical practitioners learn since the early 1960’s that caused them to change their stance on what abortion really does?  What do they know that Hippocrates et al didn’t know 2,000 years earlier?

Could it be scientific advancements such as sonograms and 4-D ultrasounds? No, those do more than anything to promote the pro-life view. Technology is the enemy of pro-legalized-abortionists and it always will be. They might have gotten away with the “blob of tissue” argument in the 60’s, or 400 years B.C., but not today.

Could it be the studies showing the impact of abortion on women? No. Despite major political pressure, more studies continue to show the adverse impact abortion has on women – both physically and emotionally.

No, even non-Jewish / non-Christian types like Hippocrates and Planned Parenthood used to know that abortion was wrong.  It takes a lot of effort and a deliberate ignorance of scientific facts to rationalize otherwise.

Church fathers and more on the pro-life issue

baby1.jpgStan had a good post (actually, all his posts are excellent . . . be sure to subscribe to his feed if you don’t already) in Winging It: Early Christianity on Abortion.

The early church leaders were very strongly pro-life.  Here are some other quotes by church fathers on abortion. They are part of a delightful post where I show how a pro-choice theological liberal tried to use a quote from a church father to support pure pacifism. Not only did he have to take it out of context to do so, he didn’t realize that his reference included a clear anti-abortion message. Turns out he didn’t really care what that church father said after all.

Also consider how these Christians knew when life began, even without the aid of ultrasounds and advanced science.  Even the pagans knew that abortion was wrong for thousands of years, as noted in the Hippocratic Oath.  Here’s a great link to use on the “where life begins” debate — it is a series of quotes from mainstream embryology textbooks and even some pro-aborts, all conceding the obvious: a new human being is created at conception.

Hey, even Planned Parenthood used to be pro-life. Seriously, in a 1964 ad for birth control they said:

Is it [birth control] an abortion? Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the meaning of life.

I wonder what scientific discovery made them change their mind? Or was it a financial discovery (abortions make some people very wealthy) or just philosophical (abortions are required to perpetuate the myth of consequence-free sexual freedom)?