I was interested to read last month in the Daily
Telegraph that more than 750 GPs, surgeons and other doctors had kept their
jobs despite being found guilty of criminal offences.
Of the convictions, 184 were for dangerous driving, 330 for
drink-driving and four for driving under the influence of drugs.
But other convictions included perjury, forgery, fraud,
making threats to kill and violent disorder, including rioting. Also included were
one doctor who took indecent photographs of a child, two with convictions for
possessing child pornography, two for trafficking drugs and three for grievous
bodily harm.
There were 31 offences of assault, three of possessing
dangerous weapons, seven for soliciting prostitutes, a dozen for domestic
violence, and two of child cruelty or neglect.
The report predictably led to protest by patient advocacy
groups. Why was it, they asked, that doctors were able to keep their jobs after
criminal convictions when other professionals weren’t?
But what about doctors who habitually break the law without being investigated or prosecuted, let alone convicted?
In this connection I was interested to see another Telegraph
article in which the journalist related a conversation she had had with a
friend who was a GP.
The doctor had deliberately falsified an HSA1
abortion authorisation form saying that the patient qualified under ‘ground C’ - mental health - when she most clearly did not.
When the patient, a student, challenged her she explained
that there were no other options to tick to grant her an abortion and that the
reasons given on the form were the only legal grounds for abortion (as
established by the 1967 Abortion Act).
This not surprisingly left the
girl mystified and the GP feeling profoundly uneasy. She had clearly been
breaking the law for some time but had never been challenged about it before.
Ground C reads as
follows:
‘The pregnancy
has NOT exceeded its 24th week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would
involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the
physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.’
In practice 98% of all abortions in Britain (about 196,000 per year)
are authorised under Ground C and 99.96% of these are under mental health rather than physical health.
But in fact, according to a major review carried out by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges in 2011, there is no evidence that the risk to mental health of continuing a pregnancy is ever greater than the risk of having an abortion.
So in other words these abortions
are technically
illegal. Furthermore doctors who knowingly or wilfully putting their
signatures to an HSA1 form in the way described are actually committing a form
of perjury (I explain this is much more detail here).
Under the Offences
Against the Person Act 1861 abortion is still a criminal offence carrying a
custodial life sentence, like murder. All the Abortion Act did was to make
abortion legal under certain restricted circumstances.
Under the Perjury Act
1911 falsifying an HSA1 form is a criminal offence which carries a
custodial sentence of up to two years, or a fine, or both.
What happens in practice is that both illegal abortion and
related perjury occur on an industrial scale in Britain.
But the police, prosecutors, the courts, parliament and the
medical profession do nothing about it.
Parliament, police and the courts have always deferred to doctors in this matter. There has been only one conviction for illegal abortion since 1967 in almost eight million cases and none, as far as I know, for perjury.
As a result, close to eight million preborn babies have had
their lives taken by doctors illegally.
As well as being illegal in probably 98% of cases in
Britain, abortion is also contrary to the Hippocratic Oath and was described
by the British Medical Association in 1947 as ‘the greatest crime’.
But now doctors are its authorisers and facilitators.
On 23 February 2012 the Chief Medical Officer wrote
to all abortion providers advising them about the importance of upholding
the law on abortion.
Last week, in answer to a parliamentary
question from David Burrowes MP, Health Minister Daniel Poulter said that
between 23 February 2012 and 31 December 2012 there were
153,335 abortions performed where the grounds involved a risk to the woman's
mental health (notice that the health minister has used wording which is
nowhere found in the Act itself).
So it appears that the CMO’s letter has made not a blind bit
of difference.
I wonder what will happen now?
I suspect, if the last 45 years is any indication, the
answer will be ‘not much’.
There is no one more innocent, more vulnerable and killed in
greater numbers in Britain than the preborn baby. That this is done largely
illegally and that no one with power does anything to stop it is one of the
greatest scandals and travesties of justice of our time.
It also makes doctors the largest group of unapprehended
criminals in the state.
The 750 doctors who are allowed to go on practising despite
having criminal convictions are a drop in the bucket in comparison.
I think any member of an organised religion should think very carefully before they try and point to the actions of others as "the greatest scandal of our time". Specks and planks, Dr Saunders. Specks and planks.
ReplyDeleteIf authorising and executing the destruction of nearly 8 million innocent lives illegally is the speck in the eye of the British medical profession (of which incidentally I am a member and thereby both fully entitled to comment and also in part responsible) then what are you suggesting is the plank in the eye of the Christian church?
DeleteMaybe the castration of whistleblowing victims of sexual abuse?
DeleteFWIW I consider "abortion" in the 3rd trimester to be infanticide. But not when the foetus has such little neural development that they are "brain dead". Certainly not from the "moment of conception", as otherwise hydatidiform moles - cancers the result of a conceptus - would be deemed "innocent lives".
So many to choose from, Dr Saunders. I'll limit this reply to one. How about the official stance of the Catholic Church on condoms in the face of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. In September of 1990' as the civilised world was embracing the use of condoms as a a way of dramatically decreasing the risk of infection, Pope John Paul II gave a speech in Tanzania warning that the use of condoms in any circumstances was a sin. Not to be satisfied with that, Catholic Bishops gave statements that using condoms would actually increase the chance of contracting the disease! With 1.8 million new HIV infections annually in the southern countries of Africa and 1.2 million annual deaths from the disease, how many of these are the responsibility of the Catholic Church, their ridiculous doctrine and the outright lies they have told. Millions have died in agony through protracted illness with families decimated through emotional suffering and loss of parents, children, siblings and friends. This is in comparison to abortion which terminates an unwanted fetus before it can feel pain.
DeleteI am not Catholic but the best way of combatting the spread of HIV is keeping sex for marriage. Wrt abortion are you seriously arguing that it is OK to kill people if they can't feel pain? So would it therefore be OK to kill someone with leprosy or a stroke as long as you inflicted the fatal wound through an anesthetic part of the body? Or alternatively would it be OK to kill someone who was under anesthetic? Or deeply asleep?
DeleteYou conveniently skip over the word "before" in my last sentence, which is a shame as it is the essence of the Pro Choice argument.
DeleteYou asked for a Christian Church scandal. Does this not fit the bill? Do you honestly regard "I'm not a Catholic but if they didn't have sex they wouldn't get aids." as a rebuttal to the heinous actions of the largest Christian church? 35 million people have died from this disease, and the church promotes the idea that it is better to catch HIV (or any other STD for that matter) than to use condoms during sex. And it lied about an increased chance of infection by using them. That is simply appalling.
Condoms aren't working in Africa as well as they should have done in theory. I've known aid workers start off with idealistic expectations of stopping the spread of AIDS by educating people about condoms only to give up in despair. There's a high cultural value on having lots of children, so people don't use them - they just sit in boxes while people are short of much-needed medical supplies. AIDS spreads because people have multiple sex partners in different cities, and, in some cases, the condoms even make matters worse because people think 'oh, great, I can have sex without getting AIDS', so they take more risks with strangers, but condoms have quite a high failure rate compared to other forms of contraception, so some people are going to get the disease anyway.
DeleteMost people agree that the countries that have had the greatest success in combating AIDS are those where government, churches and celebrities have worked together to get out the message that faithfulness and monogamy are the best way to go if you want to live to see your children. It must be scary living in a country where sex has become that deadly. How did it happen?
It's really quite simplistic to accuse the Catholic Church of spreading AIDS, as if they went round infecting people themselves.
I am not saying the Catholic Church is spreading AIDS. I am simply repeating their words. They are telling their one billion members that it is better to have sex without a condom. That is their default position. For the last quarter of a century, in light of the danger of HIV, they have reiterated that there is no reasonable excuse to use a condom to keep you or your partner safe from this terrible disease. And bishops have been spreading the lie that using a condom will increase the chance that you will catch HIV. By their own standards they are guilty of breaking the 9th commandment and they are ordering their parishioners to break the 6th. Is this not a scandal of the Christian Church?
DeleteI don't really know what you're on about. Obviously, if you're having extra-marital sex you're already breaking church rules, so what does it matter whether you use a condom or not? The last Pope recently clarified that using a condom in such circumstances could be the first step towards recognising the humanity of the person you're having sex with. I'm not aware that they've done anything as daft as advising HIV infected people to have unprotected sex. How can anybody take your posts seriously when they're just a lot of vitriolic misrepresentation?
DeleteBut the Catholic church is against you using a condom full stop. If you're married and husband or wife has HIV than it is just too bad for the other one.
ReplyDeleteYour second sentence highlights my point exactly. People are going to have extra-marital sex. Because it feels good. There's a reason prostitution is the oldest profession. So, if you are the head of a church with a billion followers, is it better for you to say, "Don't have sex outside of marriage. But if you do, do it safely." OR "Condoms are a moral sin no matter what. They should not be used under any circumstances." The latter is not going to stop people having sex. It will just stop them having safe sex. He is saying do you want to commit one sin or two? And he said this specifically to the more than 12 million catholics that were in Africa in 1990, the vast majority of home were black, poor and uneducated.
September 1990 Pope John Paul II gave his speech in Tanzania, followed by others in Southern Africa. http://divoram.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/john-paul’s-1990-speech-‘sentenced-millions-to-die’/
In 1990 HIV prevalence amongst South African women attending antenatal clinics was 0.76% In 1995 it was 10.44% and in 2000 it was 22.4% In 2000 it was estimated that 40% of all adult deaths was due to HIV/AIDS. http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/1/37.full
In 2003, contrary to empirical evidence, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family - "senior spokesman" Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo - claimed that condoms are permeable to the aids virus. He explained to BBC interviewers that "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom." These false claims were echoed by an archbishop of Nairobi, as well as by Catholics as far Asia and Latin America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_AIDS
In 2010 comments the Pope (Benedict XVI) made in an interview with journalist Peter Seewald regarding condom use attracted attention in the media. In the context of an extended discussion on the help the Church is giving AIDs victims and the need to fight the banalization of sexuality, and in response to the charge that "It is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms", Pope Benedict stated:
“ There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.
She of course does not regard [the use of condoms] as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.
In 2010. Two decades after letting, nay encouraging, the spread of this devastating disease amongst the population of an undeveloped county by constantly and unrelentingly hammering away the idea that condoms are evil. Millions dead and dying and they admit the first hint that it might be okay to use condoms … in certain circumstances. And this was not in a speech that was given to the masses, but rather as an answer to a question in an interview. What would have happened if that question wasn't asked?
My posts may come across as vitriolic. I should think so when they are referring to a scandal that has resulted in millions of people suffering and dying. If I was talking about the holocaust I'm sure people would understand any vitriol aimed at Hitler and the Nazi party. But they are not a misrepresentation. I hope this reply clarifies that.