By Kristi Burton Brown
“Putting all patients first…Med Students for Life of America”
Starting today, nine pro-life physicians will begin a tour to help train medical students in pro-life work. These physicians will travel to 25 medical schools around the nation, including John Hopkins University School of Medicine, Georgetown University School of Medicine, and University of Illinois College of Medicine.
Sponsored by Medical Students for Life of America, the tour will include lectures on “perinatal hospice, high-risk pregnancies, sex and public health, embryo adoption, medical ethics, and conscience rights.” Some lectures will be broadcast live, and others will be available later here. Any healthcare professional can attend the lectures by RSVP’ing to jrussell@studentsforlife.org.
According to Kristan Hawkins, president of Medical Students for Life of America,
This medical tour is the only one like it in the nation, reaching out directly to these targeted students to show them that they don’t have to compromise their beliefs to practice medicine. Good medicine is caring for all patients, born and preborn.
Medical students who want to start a Students for Life group on their own campus can find more information and helpful guidelines here.
Medical students need to be exposed to the truthful, accurate information provided by the Spring 2013 MedSFL Tour. Their conscience rights ought to be protected, and they ought to never be forced to participate in abortions. They ought to receive timeless information on true ethics in medicine as well as teaching on how to respect the real duty of doctors – protecting every single human life that comes into their care.
Abortion supporters are concerned about the increasing lack of doctors willing to perform abortions. The number of abortionists appears to be declining for many reasons including religious beliefs, demographic data, and the passage of pro-life laws. According to Medical Students for Choice (a group whose goal is “creating tomorrow’s abortion providers”), “2% of all American Ob/Gyns perform over 50% of abortions in the U.S.” It’s clear that regularly performing abortions is still not popular among medical professionals.
Doctors ought to hear the whole truth surrounding abortion before they are ever asked to perform one.
The decline in abortionists can also be attributed to those doctors who have rejected their former livelihood and turned pro-life. A tenth doctor joining the tour on its last stop is Dr. John Bruchalski. Once an abortionist – influenced by his own professors who taught him that more abortion was necessary – Dr. Bruchalski is now a leader in the pro-life medical world.
I didn’t see happiness or joy in my clinics. …Wherever I had more abortion, more contraception, there were more broken relationships, more infections, more destruction, more brokenness.
After ending his abortion practice, Dr. Bruchalski teaches a positive theory of medicine that works to serve the woman, the family, and the child:
‘We believe that health is based on the relationships found in community, and we believe that if we love enough in medicine we can create a loving atmosphere where abortion becomes unthinkable,’ he said. ’Almost like an abortion-free zone.’
‘Our approach is that we hate the disease but love the patient, especially the weakest of our brothers and sisters,’ he added.
Dr. Bruchalski is certainly not alone. Many other physicians and medical professionals have joined him in leaving the abortion industry for their own reasons. Many experienced great anxiety and pain when they fully realized the horrors they were taking part in day after day. Others quickly turned from pro-choice to pro-life when they actually witnessed abortions firsthand. Nurse Brenda Shafer is a prime example:
Shafer also saw Haskell do D&E abortions. He would ‘take three-month-old babies and dismember ‘em–just tear ‘em from limb to limb while the baby’s heart was beating, yank off a leg, yank off an arm and just bring it outside . . . And that was horrible. I’d never seen it before. Never really wanted to think about it before.’
The Medical Students for Life of America is performing a great service to the medical community through its tour this spring. Not only are pro-life physicians being given the opportunity to speak out and become leaders, but aspiring physicians and healthcare workers are also being given the truth before they, too, participate in an industry that will one day haunt them.
