Abortion favors physicians

Abortion favors physicians

From Kompas

Abortion has become a hot issue recently in connection with current attempts to legalize it through an amendment to Law No.23/1992.

Though the amendment is meant to protect women from unprofessional, unsafe and unscrupulous abortions, the legalization will free the medical profession engaged in this practice free from prosecution.

As indicated by gynecologist PY Kusuma, this legalization will increase abortions instead of preventing them. For example, before abortion was legalized in the U.S. in 1972, 100,000 illegal abortion cases were noted. After being legalized, the number swelled to 1.55 million in 1984.

Abortion, apart from its pros and cons, has indeed become a lucrative service. According to Bernard Nathanson, a U.S. physician responsible for about 75,000 abortion cases, the involvement of doctors in the deliberate ending of pregnancies in the U.S. is inseparable from money-making.

At the rate of US$300 an abortion, 1.55 million cases mean about $500 million a year, of which almost all went into the pockets of physicians. This implies that legalized abortions only favor doctors and other health workers.

Therefore, the government and people's representatives should control unsafe abortions by increasing their endeavors to prevent unwanted pregnancies, instead of legalizing abortion, which amounts to legalizing crimes that are opposed by religion.

FARIDA YULIANTI Bogor, West Java