Individuals from the greater Providence community and a Brown University student held a prolife rally outside Brown’s med school. They alledged that the Warren Alpert School of Medicine was teaching its students how to abort babies. To convey their point, the protestors posted pictures of dismembered fetuses. These are some scenes from that protest.
I completely agree with the cause. I disagree with the methodology.
UPDATE:I empathize with the cause. I disagree with the methodology. I think abortion is disgusting. It’s murder. After discussing Brown Med’s curriculum with Brown med students, however, it seems that Brown Med does not actually teach students to abort babies. Also, the flier encouraged students to start a med students for life group. If the protestors had done their homework, they would have easily found the following group listed on Brown Med’s website.
Brown Medical Students for Life
Leaders: Brenna Sullivan
Treasurer: Marshala Lee
Description: Brown Medical Students for Life is a broad based coalition of medical students and faculty concerned with ethical issues surrounding the termination of human life in medical settings. Our concerns include but are not limited to induced abortion, euthanasia, and destruction of human embryos. We hope to add balanced and thoughtful perspectives and initiate discussion about these and other human life issues. We will also serve as a resource for students with concerns about the ethical situations they may encounter as medical students and as physicians. This is a nonreligious, apolitical, nonprofit organization.
Guys, you shouldn’t even have to do research to know that this is ridiculous. Abortions are performed by a very small subsection of reproductive specialists who go through separate periods of training. Moreover, learning how to abort a baby is not required of ANY physician, reproductive specialist or otherwise; it is training that individuals select. Brown Med students (I know, I am one), or any other med students for that matter, are so far removed from anything actually involving patient care that something like this would be impossible; even during the “clinical” years, any sort of procedure beyond the very basics is left to those who actually know what they’re doing.
We were/are fully aware of the fact that Brown’s program for learning how to abort children in utero is an elective program. However, we oppose 1) Brown’s facilitation of this immoral practice (if fewer doctors know how to do it, or if fewer doctors treat abortion as a normal procedure, then ideally there will be fewer abortions), and 2) the appending of Brown’s name to the abortion practice (Brown went from being associated with slavery to being associated with abortion, seemingly without any lessons learned).
Our fundamental premise is that abortion is murder. You may disagree, sir, but our protest certainly made sense.
SBQ
This is the description of the year 4 elective on reproductive health from the Brown med school website you posted above:
At the end of this 4-week elective, the student will be able to provide basic reproductive health care including sexual history taking, primary care infertility, contraception, pregnancy termination counseling, and sexually transmitted disease treatment
My question is to what extent is this “pregnancy termination counseling?” Is it veiled language for actually being part of abortion procedures?
‘Training in Performing Elective Terminations
PG-2 residents learn to perform elective abortions at Planned Parenthood or with other providers in private practice. Residents who opt out of performing terminations because of moral, ethical, or religious objections still must learn how to manage the complications of abortions. Residents are also expected to learn the methods for counseling patients about abortion. Residents participate in the Women’s Primary Care Clinic medical abortion clinic, supported by a grant from the Ryan Foundation.’
(http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Obstetrics_Gynecology/residency.html#workshops/training)
SBQ