Your concern is admireable, but you're missing the point. The woman's right to choose what happens to her body trumps all. There may be risks to her (which is debateable at best), but she should be allowed to have the abortion of she wants. Saying otherwise is like saying a pregnant woman should be forced to have an abortion if she gets cancer on the grounds that it's safer for her. It's not your choice.

You're saying that the woman's right to have an abortion performed trumps somebody else's right to choose whether or not to perform operations? If I'm a doctor, a woman has more right to my hands than I do?

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

By your logic, the doctors who refuse to give pap smears to single women, to provide contraception or the cervical smear vaccine are right to do so.

What logic? I was asking you a question. And, I hope you don't find yourself having to remove hay splinters from your fists after the sound beating you gave that man of straw. Now, do you have an answer for my question?

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I was asking if you agree with doctors refusing to provide services with which they disagree, or only if you happen to think they're correct. I'd love an answer.

Yes, if you're a doctor, you should perform abortions, or at least refer the woman to someone who will.

In your previous post, you asked no question. You just invented a position for me and presented it as a statement.

It depends on the service. Any doctor who takes the Hippocratic Oath (the original one, interestingly, forbids abortion) is bound to certain ethical principals such as not doing harm to a patient and to provide for the good of the patient above all else. When it comes to administering medicine to the sick, there is really no question as to what the good thing is to do, just how to do it. But the oath provides for the doctor's discretion at overall mental and physical health. If the doctor is of the opinion that optional procedures such as abortion, birth control operations, tummy tucks, etc are unnecessary risks or overall more damaging than not having them done, then they absolutely can and should be able to refuse.

So you don't have a problem, after all, with doctors refusing to perform abortions?

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

You clearly don't understand how devastating it is to have an unwanted pregnancy. It can be argued that tummy tucks and other cosmetic surgery are unnecessary, but not an abortion. The end result of an unwanted pregnancy is an unwanted baby, which is either a permanent burden on a woman or is thrown onto the foster care system. A woman who wants an abortion should be able to have one, regardless of what other people thinkof her reasons.

In an ideal world, doctors would get off their high horses and perform any necessary procedures. But if, in the real world, they either can't or won't (how many GPs are qualified to perform them?) someone else should.

You haven't answered my question: do you agree with doctors refusing to provide services with which they disagree? Even if that includes services like contraception, sterilisation or cancer vaccinations?

My concern is a legal one. No, the woman's right to choose what happens to her own body does not trump all. It does not trump the rights of other persons. It only trumps any right one might want to grant the fetus or another entity in relation to the woman's body.

Anyhow, I concur with what Drgoodtrips said.

I'll answer your question. Yes, I agree that a doctor should be able to refuse services which goes against their morals. We had a doctor in town that wouldn't write birth control Rx's but his partner would. It didn't matter to anyone here and most admired the fact that he didn't compromise his religious beliefs. As a medical professional, I took an oath and no where in it did it say that I must participate in the killing of an unborn baby.
As for doctors getting "off their high horses", why do you think they should compromise their morals for an elective procedure???

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

Half assed guesses about what I understand pawned off as statements of fact add nothing to your argument.

Fallacy: Circumstantial Ad Hominem

I'm not sure how anything you went onto say after your questionable thesis that abortion is "not optional" supports that thesis. The fact that a woman doesn't want a baby doesn't make abortion any more necessary than the fact that a fat man doesn't want his fat makes a tummy tuck necessary. The social ramifications of what happens to that baby are irrelevant to the necessity of the procedures.

Any procedures that you deem necessary, apparently. After that tortured argument that abortions are medically "necessary" but tummy tucks are not, I'm not sure what else to conclude.

Well, of the two of us, I'm not the one interested in appointing myself King of Doctors and issuing fiats based on my whimsical caprice. I think that doctors should abide by the oath of medicine that they take. If it is their genuine opinion that a particular contraception method, sterilization procedure or vaccination would do the patient more overall harm than good, then they can and should absolutely refuse. More than that - they're bound to. With any of these things, it likely wouldn't be hard to find another doctor.

And, the consideration isn't particularly relevant in the first place. Doctors who are morally opposed to abortion are unlikely to offer it as part of their OB/GYN service in the first place. So, unless you want to pass a law that anyone who gets a degree in medicine can be legally compelled to perform an abortion at the whim of any woman, any time, any place, what does it matter? Doctors morally opposed to abortion aren't really relevant. Smadsen's original matter of contention was doctors not wanting to assume personal risk or thinking that the surgery made sense.

His position seemed to be that doctors should not be forced to perform surgeries that they don't think are a good idea. Your position appears to be that doctors should listen to emotional, hormonal women on how to proceed medically, and ignore their own assessments of the situation.

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I still fail to see how this argument is persuasive.
Putting aside my hamster analogy, it seems to me that, by this logic, if I super-glued myself to someone else then you'd recommend the "legal voidance" of one of the two of us since we'd be temporarily united.

I think you're making far too much of a physical connection/situation.
It's often quoted that "My right to swing my fist ends where the other person's nose begins." And thus, my situation determines which specific actions I can engage it at anyone moment (which direction I can swing my fist, or whether I can swing at all).
In order to determine whether I have the right to swing my fist in direction X, we must first determine if there is a person's nose in direction X and thus, determine whether anything in direction X qualifies as a person.

You're trying to tie legal recognition of personhood (or, the opposite, "legal voidance") to the situation instead of the other way 'round. In this logic, we must void the legal rights of anything in direction X because, if we did not, it would inhibit my freedom to swing my fist there.

We should be asking, "is the unborn a person?", and using that to determine whether the woman should have a the right to engage in the act of abortion that will harm this "person/not-person". You're starting with the premise that women should have the right to engage in the act of abortion, and using that to determine whether or not the unborn qualifies for the rights of personhood.
It's like me starting with the right to swing my fist in your direction and using that to void the legal protection of your nose.

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

Right. In fact, if you superglued yourself to a person and that person went into his home, could you give me a reason why he shouldn't be aquitted if he shot you as an intruder?

The rights of another person are not changed if you punch him in the nose. All that may happen is that you violate his rights. That's a big difference from two or more interdependent legal entities not being able to have the same set of rights at the same time. It's about granting rights that can't be utilized, not about violating them.

As I hope to just have shown, you do not in any way void the legal protection of neither me nor my nose. I (and my nose) have the same rights and the exact same legal protection after you've punched me as I (and my nose) did before you punched me.

With that out of the way, yes, I am certainly setting up a premise. It is, however, not a result of not having asked the question you start the above paragraph with. Since I am in fact answering the question "is the unborn a person?", the question has of course been asked. The premise I set up is that, when a conflict arises between the already granted rights of a woman and rights being granted to progeny inside her body, then the rights of the woman are superior. Unless you can convince me that it's more practical to void the woman of her rights, I consider such a premise to be the most practical solution.

(1) (2) There is a difference between unwanted excess fat and an unwanted pregnancy. The fat man can, in most cases, lose weight without the aid of a potentially lethal operation. The woman who wishes to end her pregnancy cannot do so safely without the abortion. The person denied the liposuction faces only the prospect of a diet. The person denied the abortion faces the prospect of nine months with something she doesn't want in her body and possibly a lifetime of caring for a burden she never wanted. Yes, abortion is necessary for the woman who wants it.

(3) It is not the doctor's job to decide that the woman would, in fact be happier to continue the pregnancy. It's simply not their choice.

(4) So a pregnant woman is too hormonal to decide what she wants to do about her pregnancy? But this emotional, hormonal woman is able to carry a pregnancy to term and raise a child? If you can't trust her with a choice, how can you trust her with a child? Whether or not she wants to continue the pregnancy is not the doctor's choice.

Imagine the opposite scenario: A woman is pregnant and very much wants to have the baby. She becomes very ill with cancer. Continuing the pregnancy will almost certainly compromise her health, but she insists on doing so and reducing or even stopping her treatment to protect the foetus. Can the doctor force her to have an abortion, on the grounds that it's in her best interests and she's too "emotional and hormonal" to know what's best? Or does that only apply when you disapprove of the woman's choices?