3 things: 90+ abortions are illegal (according to the legislation) but that fact is generally ignored.
90+% of articles written about abortion don't even mention contraception.
Most abortions are tax-payer funded.

"Bla bla bla should a dentist that buggared up my filling go on some public list? get real!"
Dentists are put under a lot of scrutiny, basically you cannot make mistakes. Go have a look at one of those magazines released by the dental board and all the cases about trivial errors that go on. Completely off topic i know :P.

But I think what Melinda is eluding to is that there are some strongly pro-choice ppl in high places who have an agenda to protect any form of abortion in our society. So medical professionals are given an easier break in this field than the others. I completely agree with this.

Hang on, Melinda: if it’s you who genuinely believes there is a widespread problem with the quality of abortion services, isn’t it your responsibility to make sure the complaints go through to the HCCC and the relevant medical boards? Your dismissal of the process with “Oh, but they just sit on their hands,” is unconvincing. My guess is that the regulatory authorities are probably better at picking an ideologically motivated complaint from a bona fide one than you think.

I’m certainly not arguing that substandard practice can’t occur in this field, or any other medical field. That’s why we have regulation and standards of accountability. If you believe that this process is a failure, you need to identify in exactly what way: does it take too long? Are the standards of proof too onerous? Is the complainant refused due process or not treated with respect? Are the standards themselves too low? All of these are valid questions.

Could I suggest that your apparent opposition to abortion possibly indicates that there is no standard against which an abortionist could be seen by you to be up to scratch?

If, as justin86 suggests, there is some kind of conspiracy to protect dodgy practitioners because “those in high places” are blinded by their ideological beliefs, then that is indeed a scandal. But I’m not convinced of this by your article.

You say, “You would think those who claim to care about women would have demanded Sood be stripped of her licence earlier.”

Did you?

Kenny – you are right.

Doubtless the “meddlers” will and try to do otherwise (remembering that they have no legal right to interfere in the sovereign choices of any woman who seeks abortion).

Every profession has its “non-performers”, the medical profession being no exception.

Queensland has had disastrous experiences with surgeons and doctors in recent years – far worse than this “Sood” fellow.
So should we stop all surgery because of that and tell critically ill patients to go away and wait until the world is a perfect place?

The issue is not

should a woman expect good professional treatment from a doctor in response to any condition

but –

should she be allowed to seek that professional treatment?

And to reflect on Snout’s observation -

Let us not be deceived by the faux-emotion of Tankard Reist.

She and the other control fascists just want to deny every woman the right to seek the services of any doctor who performs abortions, not just this doctor.

It is her near hysterical extremism which society needs to be protected against and possibly with more urgency than from incompetent doctors

Col R: Kenny you are right. In what? Kenny equates the killing of an innocent, helpless human infant with a botched tooth extraction/filling. Marvellous eh? people like you mob decry the treatment meeted out to Hicks, you know locked up without a fair trial. Yet you paragons of decency and mercy have no problems no qualms at all condemning an innocent, guiltless infant to death and that without any sort of trial at all.
'Meddlers' Col? Then let us not be deceived by the faux (false in your wonderful judgement-yet you have never met her, or talked with her- I bet you have a judgement on all the infants that have had the temerity to secret themselves in the body of a mother as well! Do you cease being atrociously judgemental at that bile- no!'She and other control fascists' You are the one condoning the killing of innocent babies just as the real fascist did during the time of hitler not Tankard. Do you stop even yet? - no! 'It's her hysterical extremism which society needs to be protected against' What all this woman wants to do is to save the precious lives of untried, unjudged, innocent, helpless babies not butcher them. Many of these cast-off and shunned aborted humans who they now find suffer appalling, horrifically painful deaths. You do come across as a judgemental creature with so little mercy or love a sad, sad bit of mankind Col.

The question of what constitutes good quality pregnancy counseling is a serious one.

What it should not be is an exercise in trying to convince your client of your point of view, and this is the problem with counseling services run by organizations with an ideological opposition to abortion. There is a place for such “pregnancy support agencies” – for women who have already decided to continue a pregnancy. But for women who are in the process of trying to make a decision such a bias can be unhelpful or manipulative, which is why a woman seeking counseling should have the right to know about bias before she starts.

Much of Melinda’s research, it seems, focuses on the experiences of women as they try to negotiate this decision, with a particular emphasis on the pressures some women feel to abort rather than continue, and the very real grief some women feel about their own abortions. It is very important that such experience not be silenced, and that counseling and support services not gloss over this side of the issue.

However I don’t that such insensitivity to the complexities of women’s real experience is as widespread a problem as Melinda suggests, at least with the larger and more reputable counseling services.

There are good psychological reasons why a woman who is considering abortion and who subsequently decides to go through with a “defiant birth” might view what is in fact neutral counseling as pressure to abort. It is often part of the natural process of resolving ambivalence to project the discarded side of the argument on to another person. This is a fine and healthy thing to do, and good counselors know and accept this. But it is important to recognize this phenomenon when you are trying to analyse the process for bias. There is no place for ideological agendas, whether pro or anti abortion, in this sort of counseling.