The good doctor

In your article. "A suitable case for treatment", you seem to blame the doctor who told his patient asking for an abortion, "that if she did decide to go through with it and have an abortion and if she did retrogress, she was not to come back to Wellington Hospital and she was not to see him." He had every right to place this, namely his own refusal to see her, before her. A physician is trained for several years and it is his job to decide what is the best treatment for a patient. We do not demand to take penicillin, or have our foot amputated, this is the doctor's decision. If we wish to go contrary to the doctor's prescribed treatment, taking recourse in some personal remedy of our own, why should we blame our doctor if he refuses to see us when our remedy fails? Only Christian charity would demand that he did. Why is abortion the unique case in the curing of illness, where the patient tells the physician what the remedy should be?

May I ask if any one, instead of all frantically trying to procure an abortion for this woman, actually tried to give her any mental and moral support to face up to the fact that she was pregnant? I guess not, but I would be surprised if it would not have been the most humane deed they could have done. She would be much better off for it now. Instead she and her husband are left to face their trials alone.

Mary James