[ JBEM Index / Volume 3 / Number 4 ]

The Mail Bag

J. Michael Harry is a Danish obstetrician-gynecologist who has not been able to practice medicine since 1983. He writes: “…I awaited a consultant appointment in Obst. and Gynea. in 1973, the year in which the abortion-on-demand law was passed. The Danish Medical union and Home Office demand that gyneacologists declare whether they will do such abortion, or not, when applying for an appointment. I left my hospital career, realizing that I would never be appointed and began a full-time Christian ministry, and particularly as one of the pioneers of the Charismatic Renewal in Scandinavia, especially in Finland and Denmark … Returned to Denmark [from Nazareth, Israel primarily for the education of our four children. Due to my pro-life position [I] was still unable to obtain medical work on returning to Denmark and have continued as a free-lance, travelling preacher since.”

Writing from Canada, Margaret Landry is a registered nurse who is dismayed and disgusted at the penetration of medicine by the New Age heresies and the indifference of professional organizations there to this intrusion. Having run into an “alternative” practitioner who was peddling reincarnation and other errors, she writes: “I complained to the college (where I heard the New Age lecture). I complained to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. I complained to the College of Registered Nurses of Ontario. The College of Nurses gave the longest reply but basically unless I was given a brush-off, the answer was to ‘mind my own business,’ ‘be tolerant,’ and inferred ‘be quiet.’ So the doors are closing on me. As a nurse and primarily because of my biblical beliefs I cannot work where abortions are performed. If this reincarnation medicine takes hold I could never work in it either.’

Franklin Sanders of Memphis sends an August piece from World Press Preview taken from Profil of Vienna, Austria. It describes abortion in the Soviet Union, apparently from a pro-abortion viewpoint. Even so, it is horrific. Abortions are “free,” but if you want adequate anesthesia you must illegally pay about $45 extra. Ninety percent of first pregnancies are aborted, and 30 96 of all teenagers between 15 and 20 years of age will have an abortion. The average Soviet woman will have three or four abortions in her lifetime, with abortion being described as the chief means of birth control. One female abortionist is quoted as being “really tired” after doing 22 abortions in an hour.

A newsletter entitled “Through the Iron Curtain With Love” describes the pitiful state of medical care in Romania.

“Drug stores and hospitals in Romania do not even have simple medication such as cotton, pain relievers, cough syrup, bandages, etc. Romania’s policy of banning most imports from the West to save on hard currency is to blame for much of the problem. Doctors operate under a restricted quota of medicines, regardless of the number of the needs of their patients. If a doctor dispenses more medicine than his limit, the extra cost is deducted from his own wages … Persons with broken bones are required to find their own material for casts; surgery patients need to bring their own sutures.” The newsletter is published by Christian Aid Ministries, P .O. Box 360, Berlin, OH 44610.

[ JBEM Index / Volume 3 / Number 4 ]