Abortion and Two Historic Parallels
(Some thoughts about Right and Wrong)
Hart Bezner, Ph.D.

Doc Riojas' question:   A lesson from the past,  Will Obama demand our doctors what the Reich Commissar asked Holland's Medical Professionals to report?

"To show that the medical profession cannot be forced to kill we only need to recall an event in occupied Holland.  On December 19, 1941, the Reich Commissar of the Netherlands Territories issued an order requiring all doctors to report incurably ill patients.  The physicians of Holland rejected this order unanimously.  When the Reich Commissar threatened to withdraw their licenses, they returned their licenses and removed their shingles, but continued to see their patients secretly.  They refused, however, to issue birth or death certificates.  The commissar, Seiss-Inquart, retraced his steps and attempted to gain their cooperation in a more friendly manner, but the Dutch physicians still refused.  He then arrested 100 of the doctors and shipped them off to the concentration camps, but the remaining ones remained more adamant than ever, and quietly provided for the widows and orphans.  Thus it came about that not a single euthanasia nor non-therapeutic sterilization was participated in by any Dutch physician.  They were truly outstanding in not taking even the smallest step to compromise their ethical foundation.  They acted unanimously and they won out in the end.  They should be a model to our own physicians who feel they can’t refuse when requested to kill.  Since the war, however, things have also degenerated badly in the Netherlands and the memory of the heroic Dutch physicians who resisted so valiantly is now dishonored by their successors."

Excerpt from here:    http://homepage.mac.com/hart.bezner/historic_parallels.html