VINCENT CHIARELLO writes about the annual anti-abortion march in Washington, D.C., which takes place every January 22, the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade:

If you were to read a summary of the March for Life in newspapers – usually relegated to the inside pages, and with a serious undercounting of the numbers involved – rarely will you sense the adrenalin that the March generates amongst those who are there as participants. This is particularly interesting for it does not need an expert observer to notice that a large – very large – segment of the Marchers are young, which says something about the tectonic shift in societal group-think that is taking place virtually unnoticed.

Further overlooked is the annual growth in numbers: according to Marchers I spoke to, some of whom have been returning here for the past dozen years, the size of the rally “continues to grow.”  One delegation which has made an appearance over the last several years is that of my parish: St. Athanasius, in Vienna, Virginia.

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Once a pernicious doctrine is imposed, by law or by force, the unpredictable consequences of the act will have repercussions that were never expected. Call it the doctrine of the “slippery slope,” or “Murphy’s Law,” but the decision of the Supreme Court in January, 1973, has brought about changes never imagined or foreseen.

For example, what of the doctor who performs an abortion?  Not that long ago, he was subject to criminal penalties, as well as shunned by his colleagues as a corrupter of the lofty ideals of the medical profession. Most states had laws criminalizing the practice of abortion, and for those medical doctors who performed one, aside from the legal penalties, there was also a professional stigma attached. Today, the abortionist is considered a compassionate practitioner of medicine, but that reputation is contrary to the history of medicine.

More than two and one half millennia ago, the Hippocratic Oath, which, in part, stated: I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give a woman an abortive remedy (emphasis mine),became the guiding principle of medical doctors with its implicit caveat: Primus non nocet. (First, do no harm.) Today, when the requirement of traditional practice comes into conflict with a more modern mindset, invariably it is tradition that is changed. In this case, the Hippocratic Oath was either de-emphasized or re-written. According a 2012 Georgetown University Journal of Health Services article, as of 2001, “… 100% of medical school graduates in the United States swear to some variation of the Hippocratic Oath. Most of these Oaths are vague in language and contain the principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, patient autonomy, and social justice. Only 14% of these oaths prohibit euthanasia, 11% refer to a deity, 8% forbid abortion, and 50% of them do not reference accountability at all.”

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