PRO - LIFE PHYSICIANS

The Vision of the Association of Pro-Life Physicians (APP

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.

-Original Hippocratic oath, circa 400 B.C.

Hippocrates was a physician who practiced medicine about four hundred years before Christ. He is known as the father of medicine and most well-known for his Hippocratic Oath. Although the principle elements of the Oath have long been abandoned by medical schools, for hundreds of years medical students on the day of graduation took an oath modeled after the Hippocratic Oath. It was an oath to practice medicine ethically.

The original oath embodied several ideals, one of which included an acknowledgement of Trancendance. The notion that there is a Supreme Being who will hold the strong accountable for how they treat the weak is critical to the ethical ideals of the Hippocratic oath. Divine law is higher than the laws of men. Even if it is legal for the strong to abuse the weak, even if it is politically popular for the rich to exploit the poor, even if it is convenient for the privileged to abort the defenseless, the God who made all creatures will judge us by His absolute ethical standard: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Another ideal embodied in the Hippocratic oath is a vow not to commit abortions. One translation of the Oath reads:

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.”

Imagine a culture where patients were filled with worry that someone was paying their physician more to end their life than they were paying to keep them alive. That was the Greek culture of Hippocrates day. Doctors were ending the lives of their patients through physician-assisted suicide and abortion Hippocrates drew an ethical line in the proverbial sand. On one side he called all physicians who would not end the lives of patients; on the other, he left those who would. Patients voted with their dollars, and in time, physicians either adopted the Hippocratic oath or they lost business. Ending the lives of patients through medical services was re-stigmatized.

The restoration of the pro-life plank of the Hippocratic oath to a remnant of physicians in our communities is the vision of the Association of Pro-life Physicians (APP).

Happily, we have entered an era in which the fetus can be rightfully considered and treated as our second patient. Who would have dreamed – even a few years ago – that we could serve the fetus as a physician.”

-Williams Obstetrics, 16th edition (from the Preface)

Sadly, there are physicians in America who defy this Hippocratic ideal and violate God’s standard for governing our treatment of others. As of 2007, almost million innocent human beings have been aborted by medical professionals since the Supreme Court permitted abortion throughout all fifty states in 1973. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the largest group of physicians that provide healthcare to women, officially endorses abortion, including late-term abortions on healthy babies that can survive outside the womb. Most physicians’ groups are either complicit with the Abortion Holocaust or are apathetically silent about the plight of the pr - born. Widespread abortion has corrupted our profession.

The vision of the Association of Pro-life Physicians (APP) is being successfully implemented one doctor at a time, one patient at a time, one county at a time. When we have a list of pro-life physicians in a community, we work to educate the community on who the local pro-life physicians are so that patients can make educated choices to prefer like-minded, pro-life doctors.

We invite pro-lifers in communities around the nation to join with us in creating a list of physicians who prescribe to the pro-life plank of the Hippocratic oath. Through letter-writing, phone calls, and word-of-mouth, you can easily discover which physicians in your community are convinced that life begins at conception, who will not commit nor refer for abortions. Once you have a list, you can begin to educate your communities—pastors, priests, churches, civic leagues, friends and family—on which physicians share their values about life. In time, we will re-stigmatize the abortionists in our communities and lives will be saved.

Patients have a right to know whether their doctor commits abortions or refers patients for abortions. We want to give those who share our beliefs about the humanity of the pre - born child an educated choice so they can choose a physician with similar values and discriminate against non-Hippocratic physicians. We also want physicians who commit abortions to feel shame and community pressure for their role in the exploitation of the pre - born. It is our hope that, in time, the majority of physicians in the United States will have adopted our Oath, and the majority of patients in every city will prefer doctors who won’t commit abortions or refer for abortions.

The APP also seeks to employ our medical expertise and influence in our communities to educate the public and political leaders on the humanity and viability of the pre - born child, and to encourage alternative, more compassionate responses to a crisis pregnancy than abortion.

To learn if there are any APP doctors in your community, please visit our database of Pro-life Physicians here. We have articles on the website which detail our positions on abortion in cases of rape and incest and for the health of the mother. You will find us consistent with our premise that life begins at fertilization, and there are no exceptions to the divine ordinance against taking the lives of innocent human beings (Exodus 20:13).

All gifts to the APP will be used solely towards our mission. Physicians are available for speaking engagements.

The Association of Pro-life Physicians

5063 Dresden Court

Zanesville, Ohio 43701

Saving lives | Saving medicine The APP | prolifephysicians.org