This is taken directly from the Wednesday STOPP Report email newsletter - and is self-explanatory.
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Statement from Yale’s Dr. Lockwood
In last week’s WSR, we alerted you to the fact that Yale Medical School has an arrangement with Planned Parenthood of Connecticut whereby Planned Parenthood provides abortion training for Yale residents.
A number of you wrote to Yale and received responses from Dr. Charles Lockwood, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale. At our invitation, Dr. Lockwood wrote a statement for our readers.
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That statement is:
September 2, 2006
To the Editor of STOPP:
As Director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital, I appreciate the opportunity to clarify my Department’s position on abortion training of our residents. As your readers understand all to well, abortion presents a fundamental ethical dilemma as it creates a conflict between society’s beneficent obligation to protect its children and the right of every woman to have her reproductive autonomy respected. To those who earnestly believe that all life is sacred and that life begins at conception, all abortions are unjustifiable on moral grounds, indeed intrauterine devices and emergency contraception are the moral equivalent of infanticide. Those who posit that a woman must have unrestricted access to abortion to insure full protection of reproductive autonomy contend that a woman has a right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason until birth. However, according to extensive polling data most Americans do not take such extreme views. Most pro-life advocates would permit abortion to save a mother’s life, and some would support its availability in cases of rape and incest. Most pro-choice advocates would be unwilling to support abortion on demand in the third trimester and some are uncomfortable with termination for any cause after the first trimester is reached.
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As a Roman Catholic, and because of my own views on the subject, I have chosen not to perform abortions. However, as a physician caring for women, I also understand that women must make their own fully informed choice on the issue in the context of their own spiritual, moral and ethical beliefs. Moreover, as Director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Yale-New Haven Hospital and Chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale University School of Medicine, both secular institutions whose employees have diverse views on abortion, I do not have the luxury of forcing my own personal religious or moral views on my colleagues. More to the point, I am bound by the dictates of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Resident Review Committee, an independent body that governs and accredits all medical residency programs. Should a residency program lose RRCaccreditation, that program would have to shut down.
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The RRCrequires that “No program or resident with a religious or moral objection shall be required to provide training in or to perform induced abortions. Otherwise, access to experience with induced abortion must be part of the residency education.” Because we are a secular institution, we must comply. Moreover, since very few abortions are performed at Yale-NewHaven Hospital, interested residents receive training at Planned Parenthood. Such access is necessary for Yale to maintain its residency program. However, in contrast to your web sites story, no Ob/Gyn resident at Yale is required to do, or be trained to perform elective abortions or to be involved in the care of patients prior to their abortion in any way. In fact, they are all encouraged by me to opt out if they have any objections whatsoever. Our policy is to give our residents “Choice” and stands in stark contrast to those programs who mandate resident abortion training.
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The RRC further mandates that “Experience with management of complications of abortion must be provided to all residents,” including those who opt out of abortion training. There are compelling medical and humanitarian reasons to require training in management of complications resulting from an induced abortion, as well as techniques related to stillbirths and miscarriages. It would be morally irresponsible to fail to provide such training to our residents.
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In a sense, my situation is not unlike that of Catholic political leaders. Because I grew up in Massachusetts in 1960’s, I have an intense appreciation for the clash between religious conviction and politics. Many of your older readers will remember the harassment of the late John Kennedy over his Roman Catholicism and his elegant response, “Whatever one’s religion in his private life may be, for the office-holder nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts.”
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The countless e-mails I have received from your and affiliated web site readers have run the gamut from deeply spiritual and thoughtful to vitriolic, threatening and profoundly insulting. I find it ironic that the last time I received such highly charged correspondence was after I served as an expert for the Department of Justice in its legal defense of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. At that time, the e-mails were from the Pro-Choice community and they also ranged from thoughtful to vitriolic, threatening and profoundly insulting. I was quite literally “banned” from speaking at certain academic institutions and various local protests were arranged to “punish” my temerity for agreeing to speak the truth on this volatile topic in a public forum.
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The real tragedy is that while both sides have legitimate points to be made, they have long since stopped listening to each other and chosen instead the simple expedient of labels and insults. I would implore both sides to be fair-minded, accurate and precise with their arguments. Indeed, that is the only way they will ultimately be successful. They both must do their homework. Both sides must understand that in a multi-religious, pluralist, heterogeneous country, you can’t legislate your group’s vision of morality – particularly when there is no consensus, otherwise we risk following in the footsteps of our Islamic radical enemies. On the hand, we also have an obligation to articulate our vision of morality to our neighbors; otherwise we risk descent into barbarism. But our arguments must be objective and truthful.
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Charles J. Lockwood, MD
The Anita O’Keefe Young Professor of Women’s Health and Chair
Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences Yale University School
of Medicine Chief, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Yale New Haven Hospital
Judie Brown responds to Dr. Lockwood
It is clear that Dr. Lockwood’s statement makes several points which are opposed to our philosophies. In order to give you both sides of this, we asked Judie Brown, president of American Life League, to respond to Dr. Lockwood’s statement.
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Here is Judie’s response:
To the Readers of the Wednesday STOPP Report,
It was astounding to read that the Catholic physician who directors the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital would be so bold as to defend his view relative to medical resident training in the practice of abortion. At the start, however, please allow me to make it clear that it is not Dr. Charles J. Lockwood’s religious identity that troubles me as much as his flirtation with what is best described as politically correct scientific facts.
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Catholic, Buddhist, Jew or atheist – the scientific facts in this case do not change. Once a human sperm penetrates a human egg, a human being is created whose very essence is unique. His DNAexists at that moment, his sex is determined, and most of his biological characteristics are engraved in that identity at that time. The only thing he needs is time to grow and to be nourished within his mother.
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But sadly, in today’s twisted world of abortion-speak, Dr. Lockwood explains that his role at a secular institution would not permit him to explain that abortion is an act that kills a person. But by taking that stance, he has passed up a splendid opportunity to expose the deadly reality of a requirement that innocent human beings be killed in order to meet the standards of accreditation. While Dr. Lockwood explains that he could not use religious or moral objections to expose the hypocrisy of such standards, one has to wonder why he cannot use basic scientific facts. He could simply point out to the Resident Review Committee that the act of abortion, though protected under cover of law, requires a physician to kill. Since a physician is to avoid doing harm to his patients, how can it be that in the case of abortion, a physician must accept the fact that killing is part of his trade?
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The Resident Review Committee’s requirements are contrary to sound medical practice, but unless and until someone in a position to work for change does so, the requirements will remain in place. Perhaps it is Dr. Lockwood’s status that is getting in the way of logic and reason. One really cannot say at this point; all we can do is invite him to contemplate the value of exposing what is and is not sound medical practice.
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Further, Dr. Lockwood appears to be somewhat pleased that he has given his students in training a “choice” to participate in the deadly training. He implies that one should be impressed that he offers his students the opportunity to opt out of being trained in the art of killing defenseless babies. While that may placate some who have expressed concerns regarding Yale’s collaboration with Planned Parenthood, it does not sate all of us.
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Dr. Lockwood tells us that it would be “morally irresponsible” to fail to provide certain training to his residents. But several lines earlier he told us that it would be unacceptable to register a “moral” objection to such training. One cannot have it both ways, and so it seems that only certain types of morals are unacceptable while others – immoral acts masquerading as medical training – are perfectly acceptable. I cannot speak for anyone else who has read his response to STOPP International’s report, but I for one find such reasoning lacking.
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Dr. Lockwood compares himself to those Catholic political leaders who grew up in the sixties. He tells us he has respect for the “clash between religious conviction and politics.” That too misses the point. The political leaders of the 1960s, such as John F. Kennedy, made it a point to assure voters that he would never permit his religious beliefs to interfere with the execution of his duties as president.
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Are we to believe that Dr. Lockwood can accomplish the same divorce of faith principles from the practice of medicine? If we do accept that, what we are really accepting is a portrait of a medical professional who chooses to put moral principles in a box when he goes to work. He would have us believe that he need not think about his obligations to God while he is working.
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That thinking betrayed the Catholic Church in the ‘60s when Kennedy did it, and it still betrays the church today. But even worse, it has the potential to endanger the soul of the man or woman who takes such an oxymoronic view of faith. A true belief in the teachings of the Church is not an overcoat that can be taken off and hung in the closet when it is inconvenient to have it around. Faith is supposed to form our character and inform our conscience. Is that not why we claim a faith identity in the first place?
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Dr. Lockwood accuses “both sides” of not listening to each other, but I would venture to propose a different scenario, one that has confronted mankind since the beginning of time. It is never fair-minded to kill an innocent human being, regardless of how the law might define or ignore his existence. It is neither accurate nor precise to describe an act of killing as an acceptable choice. And it is unseemly to suggest that those who choose to live their faith 24 hours a day are people who have no right to bring that faith into the public square. That is totally unrealistic, for the matter of the existence of the human being is a scientific one, not a religious one. The existence of laws in our nation that protect the innocent from killers, rapists and thieves proves the point. Laws are – at least in theory – designed to punish crime, not annihilate the innocent.
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The suggestion that it is acceptable to work toward a majority opinion before the nation decides whether it should be acceptable to continue the legal murder of millions of innocent human beings who live in the womb is anything but civilized. A society that requires a consensus before acting to defend the helpless is a society doomed to fail. A profession that bases its code of ethics on an unjust law that has condemned millions to death is neither truthful nor objective.
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Judie Brown
President
American Life League
