By Kathy Ostrowski, Kansans for Life Legislative Director
In spite of past efforts to stop the practice, Obstetrician/Gynecologist residents at the University of Kansas Med Center (KUMC) get abortion training. House Bill 2598 will –among other pro-life provisions– put an end to end that training.
Kansas pro-lifers thought it had been ended in 1998, when it became illegal to do abortions on state property, except those to prevent the mother’s death. However, KUMC merely moved the abortion training for residents offsite, and now says that the accreditation of their residency program by the American Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) demands such abortion participation.
Poppycock. Arizona called that bluff last year, forbidding med school abortion training, and their medical school program remains on the ACGME accredited list.
The pro-abortion squeeze on medical schools began in 1995. The National Abortion Federation designed the ‘training mandate’ for ACGME as a recruitment tool for the ever-dwindling number of abortionists nationwide. However, enacted in 1996, the federal Coats amendment declared that all individual students –and medical programs– were free to opt out of abortion participation and could not be discriminated against, nor lose federal funding for so doing..
Careful reading of the ACGME rules show that religious, moral or LEGAL restrictions can trigger the ‘opt out” (see article IV. A. 2 d, on pg. 13). In addition, ACGME requires training to manage abortion complications as well as a promise from the program not to discriminate against, or impede, ob/gyn residents who want to obtain actual abortion experience ‘on their own time and own dime’.
HB 2598 bans abortion by state entities, including medical students insured as state employees of KUMC. It does not forbid participation in abortion (and training) done to prevent the mother’s death, including ectopic pregnancies.
Ob/gyns are no less competent for not having performed abortions. Such a mandate coerces students in the healing arts into violating their conscience in order to obtain a medical license.
Congratulations to Arizona for ending the “abortion training” bullying. Kansas pro-lifers plan to join you, now how about the other states?
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