“The actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation,” declared six former U.S. surgeons general appointed by every Republican and Democratic president since George H.W. Bush in a Oct. 7 op-ed at The Washington Post. “The profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored,” the surgeons general declared. Whatever the merits of such criticisms of RFK, its alarmism is undermined by decades of the medical establishment wantonly kowtowing to harmful policies promoted by leftist ideologues.
It would be easier to countenance such admonitions if this isn’t precisely what the American medicine and scientific establishment has done when it comes to abortion, transgenderism, or the Covid pandemic.
The Conceit of Abortion as ‘Good Medical Practice‘
Though the American medical establishment was historically opposed to abortion, in 1970, the American Medical Association formally reversed its earlier position on abortion and voted in favor of legal abortion. Was this because of overwhelming evidence overturning scientific consensus regarding life in the womb being uniquely human, or analysis that abortions would not result in negative consequences for the women who underwent the procedures? Of course not.
Both simple logic and developments in scientific research are sufficient to know that life in the womb is human — with heartbeats beginning at the end of the fourth week of gestation — and thus deserving of legal protection. Arms, hands, fingers, feet, and toes are fully formed by week ten. And can we really believe that the medical establishment would think that a violent, invasive procedure that destroys a living organism inside a woman’s body, that her body is intimately united to and shares her DNA, would not in some sense harm that mother?
No, the medical establishment changed its position on abortion because of rising public pressure and social norms stemming from the sexual revolution. The feminist movement for female equality and empowerment demanded that women have more control over their bodies, enabling them to assume (and maintain) a competitive place in the workplace and attain more power in sexual relationships. Babies were (and remain) an obstacle to professional and personal development. Thus, suddenly, the AMA decided that “reproductive care is health care.”
This, despite the fact that a bevy of peer-reviewed quantitative analysis demonstrates that post-abortive women had an 81 percent higher risk of mental-health problems when compared with women who had not had an abortion, as authors Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis have noted. Studies show that after an abortion, women suffer higher rates of anxiety disorders, alcohol abuse and suicidal behaviors, and marijuana abuse. And, obviously, abortions are catastrophic for the health and well-being of life in the womb. Nevertheless, the AMA to this day decrees that abortion is “good medical practice.”
Hellbound and Down 