When Doctors Used to Condemn Abortion …
From the pages of American history

In 1871, abortion was considered a “foul, unprovoked murder” and unprofessional for physicians to perform. This was the stated opinion of the American Medical Association (AMA) – and it reflects how Christian morality has degenerated since that time.

According to the AMA, the physician’s role was comparable to a “good shepherd,” whose chief mission was to “do as much good as possible and as little evil as possible to the human family…” Abortionists were called “modern Herod’s” and “executioners … who were false to their profession,” who sought “not to save but to destroy,” according to the statement. “(W)e see in our midst a class of men, regardless of all principle, regardless of all honor, who daily destroy the fair fabric of God’s creation; who daily pull down what He has built up; who act in antagonism to that profession of which they claim to be members.”

Abortionists were condemned and “every physician of the United States” was to “resort to every honorable and legal means in his power to crush out from among us the pest of society …” Discouraged from associating with abortionists, physicians were exhorted to “form themselves into a special police to watch, and to detect, and bring to justice these characters. They should shrink with horror from all intercourse with them, professionally or otherwise.”

The statement continued: “(I)n the opinion of this convention, it will be unlawful and unprofessional for any physician to induce abortion or premature labor, without the concurrent opinion of at least one respectable consulting physician, and then always with a view to the safety of the child – if that be possible.”