WASHINGTON, Dec 6, 2000 (LSN.ca) – The director of planning and information of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops slammed the American Medical Association for their recent decision to promote over-the-counter distribution of the abortifacient morning-after-pill. Cathy Cleaver noted that the AMA was being “extremely misleading” calling the morning-after-pill a “contraceptive.” In an interview with United Press International (UPI) she said, “They call it a contraceptive. But what it really does is preventing the fertilized embryo from implanting itself on the uterine wall.” Cleaver slammed the AMA dishonesty saying, “They are trying to fool women, as if they didn’t know any better.”
One of the leading US moral theologians, Monsignor Bill Smith, dean of St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, NY, said of the AMA decision: “Whatever respect I have had for the AMA, I have lost it . . . The AMA has downplayed the Hippocratic oath since Roe v. Wade (in 1973) and finally dumped it. Now they just promise not to do anything illegal.”
UPI also reports that Prof. Gerald McDermott, an Episcopal theologian at Roanoke College, VA, reproached the AMA for imposing an intolerable responsibility on the pregnant woman. “By giving the ‘day after’ pill to her, a physician is abdicating all responsibility. In other words, she is the one who will have to preside over her baby’s death. This is putting her face-to-face with killing.”
See the UPI report at: https://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=141752