(LifeSiteNews) – In the immediate years prior to the Dobbs decision’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the official policy of the American Medical Association (AMA) with regard to abortion was generally, though not overwhelmingly, positive. The organization stated that, “The Principles of Medical Ethics of the AMA permit physicians to perform abortions in keeping with good medical practice.” However, following the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the official response of the AMA was one of complete disapproval of the decision and overwhelming anger that the supposed “right” to abortion would be threatened. Their official statement of June 24, 2022, opined:
“The American Medical Association is deeply disturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nearly a half century of precedent protecting patients’ right to critical reproductive health care—representing an egregious allowance of government intrusion into the medical examination room, a direct attack on the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship, and a brazen violation of patients’ rights to evidence-based reproductive health services.”
It is understandable that in our current lazy cultural sloth and lack of historical accuracy, we might think that the AMA has always supported abortion on demand, euphemistically called “reproductive health.” This could not be further from the truth.
What the modern AMA organization failed to acknowledge in their sanctimonious statement, even remotely, was that the very organization itself had previously vociferously and unanimously condemned abortion and abortionists in the strongest of terms. The official wording that the AMA had used in characterizing the evil of abortion included labeling abortion as “this crime in all its hideous deformity” and “the greatest curse which could befall the human family.” In our modern western society, such wording coming from a pulpit, let alone a professional medical association, is scarcely conceivable and defies our “tolerant” sensibilities.
But to make matters even more shocking, it was, in fact, the AMA itself that was responsible for most of the individual state laws that had remained (largely completely) intact until Roe v. Wade imposed abortion as a federal “right” in 1973. And now, with Roe v. Wade abolished in 2022, the AMA is left to acknowledge that several of the very state laws now outlawing abortion are the same state laws that the AMA demanded be passed in the first place. The AMA’s official documents that led to laws ultimately overturned by Roe v. Wade in 1973 were carefully detailed by researcher F.N. Dyer in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, 2021.
In their foundational Code of Medical Ethics, the AMA in 1847 stated:
“From the age of Hippocrates to the present time, the annals of every civilized people contain abundant evidences of the devotedness of medical men to the relief of their fellow-creatures from pain and disease, regardless of the privation and danger … a sense of ethical obligations rising superior, in their minds, to considerations of personal advancement. Well and truly was it said by one of the most learned men of the last century: that the duties of a physician were never more beautifully exemplified than in the conduct of Hippocrates, nor more eloquently described than in his writings.”
In 1857, a physician-led campaign against abortion was commenced at the AMA’s annual meeting, forming a Committee on Criminal Abortion. Dr. Horatio R. Storer requested the formation of this committee and became the chairman. “Criminal abortion” at the time meant any abortion, other than one carried out to supposedly save the life of the mother (with the improvements in obstetrical care today, this is an arcane argument; deliberately ending the life of a child is never necessary to save the mother’s life). No serious mention of approving abortion was ever a consideration from the time of the AMA’s inception ten years earlier in 1847. The abortion committee document was completed and presented at the AMA’s 1859 annual meeting, and was unanimously adopted, “not a dissenting voice in any direction.”
The pivotal 1859 AMA Memorial and Address to federal and state governments and medical societies
The Report on Criminal Abortion culminated in the Memorial sent to then-President James Buchan, the U.S. Congress, and individual state governors and legislators (Figure 1). Similarly, a documentary Address was sent to the individual state medical societies (Figure 2). The documents, both unanimously approved, asked for strengthening the laws to criminalize abortion, and called on all state medical societies to reinforce this to their state governments.
The Memorial and Address to federal and state governments and medical societies recommended that the laws regulating “the crime [of abortion]” be revised and strengthened. It included statements that we today might erroneously view as harsh language, lamenting the “immense number of living children annually are intentionally destroyed in this country, and…the serious injury thereby inflicted upon the public morals…”
The language of the Memorial grew ever more explicit, with the AMA affirming that the “moral guilt of Criminal Abortion depends entirely upon the real and essential nature of the act. It is the intentional destruction of a child within its parent; and physicians are now agreed…that the child is alive from the moment of conception”; “The evil to this crime is evident[.]”
The AMA felt it was the duty of this newly-formed professional organization to venture into the abortion arena because society was not fulfilling its responsibilities, and the Memorial stated that “Public sentiment and the natural sense of duty instinctive to parents proving insufficient to check the crime … It has therefore become the duty of the American Medical Association, in view of the prevalence and increasing frequency of Criminal Abortion … publicly to enter an earnest and solemn protest against such unwarrantable destruction of human life.”
The AMA’s Address to the individual state medical societies (Figure 2) included similar verbiage:
“That while physicians have long been united in condemning the act of producing abortion, at every period of gestation, except as necessary for preserving the life of either mother or child, it has become the duty of this Association, in view of the prevalence and increasing frequency of the crime, publicly to enter an earnest and solemn protest against such unwarrantable destruction of human life.”
The declaration to the medical societies continued: “Resolved, That in pursuance of the grand and noble calling we profess, the saving of human lives, and of the sacred responsibilities thereby devolved upon us…[we]present this subject…with the prayer that the laws by which the crime of procuring abortion is attempted to be controlled…” The declaration affirmed that “… it now has become our duty earnestly to request…early and hearty action…against the common, though unnatural crime it aims to check.”
In the presidential speech to the 1860 AMA meeting, it was pronounced that the documents to the U.S. President and Congress, state governors, and legislators were unanimously agreed upon to be sent “with the prayer that the laws by which it has been attempted to restrain and punish abortionism may be revisited, and such legal enactments provided as the heinousness of the crime demands.”
This secured the stringent state laws against abortion passed over the next few decades, and most of which remained largely intact until overruled by the Supreme Court in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. JC Mohr chronicled these events in his 1978 book “Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900.” The importance of the American Medical Association’s moral crusade in outlawing abortion cannot be overstated. Mohr writes: “Between 1860 and 1880 the regular physicians’ campaign against abortion in the United States produced the most important burst of anti-abortion legislation in the nation’s history. At least 40 anti-abortion statutes of various kinds were placed upon state and territorial law books during the period…”
There was a time in the history of our country, and indeed Western Civilization, when medicine could be trusted. There was a time when physicians and all health care providers knew what the Hippocratic Oath actually said about abortion and euthanasia, and followed their sacred duty to protect innocent human life. There was a time when the most important attribute of medicine was the authentic caring of the patient, and all actions of the health care providers were resolute and steadfast in the goal of improving the lot of mankind in the Christian tradition.
The American Medical Association did not end their pro-life, explicitly anti-abortion stance with their 1859 appeals to the state and federal governments and individual medical societies. In fact, their follow-up report on “Criminal Abortion” a decade later had among the most fiery but eloquent condemnations of abortion ever penned. The report even gave a prophetic, even apocalyptic, foretaste of the consequences of what would happen to any society which should condemn itself by embracing abortion. More of that in a future article, The American Medical Association and Abortion Part II: The AMA’s Apocalyptic Predictions on Abortion.