As a female medical student, I am absolutely horrified by the Victorian bill's mandatory requirement for a doctor to put aside his or her own morals and be involved in a woman eventually getting an abortion.

You might not think that the taking of a human life who happens to be developing inside of a uterus as opposed to outside of one is murder, but prolifers do. How would you like it if you were forced to be a part of something you considered murder?

I think it's ironic pro-choicers are standing against a doctor's right to choose not to be involved in this. It makes no sense ethically. It's not just the mother of the foetus that has some degree of autonomy- the doctor should as well.

I'm also weary of people treating abortion like a human right, or a medical necessity. I believe people who say prolife doctors should choose another profession are simply showing their ignorance. The Hippocratic Oath states explicity that doctors must not help a woman procure a miscarriage (abortion). Now I know we don't follow the Oath strictly (doctors kids aren't given preference in getting into medicine for example) but I think it's an interesting evolution of medicine that there are now people who see this as a right.

Oh Precious, take a trip to La Paz, Bolivia and walk from downtown to Hotel Europa. Most likely you will travel up a street that has shop after shop filled with white shoe boxes. Well actually they aren't shoeboxes but coffins for babies that die in utero in the last trimester or are stillborn or fail to live to 12 months because mum's diet is so poor that she hasn't good enough nutrition to bear a viable baby.

Listen to the stories of second generation Australian welfare recipients and empathise.

Better still Precious, don't go into general practice.

Two points.

1) We do not know, and probably never will, if a foetus has the same life status as a born human being. Perhaps proper consciousness does not appear until the baby is born. The Rabbis thought so, presumably so did Jesus as a Jew. Medieval and modern Christian according to the Catholic Church thinks otherwise.

It does seem reasonable to me that if a birth is likely to endanger the life of a mother it is an intelligent choice to put the obviously fully alive mother ahead of the foetus which may or not be.

2) Why this concern about the Hippocratic Oath? The ancient Greeks who produced it possessed by comparison to us a very poor knowledge of the human body. Any medical procedure involves a risk, yet we endure it if the probability of success and the possible improvement to our health make that risk acceptable. Do no harm is meaningless in terms of modern knowledge. Surely no surgical procedure can ever totally fit that criterion?

"We do not know, and probably never will, if a foetus has the same life status as a born human being. Perhaps proper consciousness does not appear until the baby is born."

Wrong.

Good evidence suggests babies don't develop consciousness (or awareness of self) till 6-9months after birth.

Also, it's worth remembering, most abortions occur before the embryo even develops a nervous system.

netjunkie, the Hippocratic oath says nothing on abortion.

It is legally considered as a medical procedure that every person has a right to.

If a patient comes into a doctor's office the doctor has the right to refuse to perform the procedure, but having taken on the patient is obliged to refer.

I have no doubt that the doctor that refused to refer would also have no problem in claiming his fees (hypocritical oath)

Netjunkie, believe me as a doctor you will be asked to attend to persons who have done things and have got themselves into a medical situation whom you will find abhorrent. You will at times have to fight your natural revulsion and feeling that this person no longer deserves to live. Indeed, here this person will die, but for your intervention. Are you going to let 'nature'/God take its course? Are you going to refer this patient to another doctor? Are you going to attend to this person yourself?

Doctors are not there to determine a person's morality or worthiness, but to use their skills to provide a service.

Do no harm? How wonderfully arrogant for any human to presume what is harmful and what is not for another autonomous human being.

Unfortunately, dreadful harm is perpetuated on some patients on any given day in a hospital near you. But that's another topic altogether.

The termination of a pregnancy is the business between a pregnant woman and HER conscience. She is the one who has to live with the consequences, one way or another.