To the Editor:
As Catholic pro-life Brown medical students, we feel the need to respond to inaccuracies presented in the article "Pro-lifers protest Brown Med School's abortion training" [Oct. 30 edition] and express our disappointment in Rhode Island Catholic's failure to verify information presented by the protesters before printing it.
We would also like to highlight the detriment of the poorly-informed tactics used by the protesters in promoting a culture of life and supporting medical students who choose to be pro-life, despite being at odds with many of their colleagues.
Use of inaccurate information to further one's point undermines the credibility of pro-lifers more generally, not just that of those involved, and is counterproductive, so let us start by clearing up the facts.
The protest on Brown's campus, outside of the medical school building, intended to promote awareness that the medical school at Brown is training us to perform abortions. No such training program exists. Medical students are not being trained to perform abortions, in either the biomedical building outside of which the protest took place, or during our clinical training time.
At Brown Med and most other medical schools, it is simply not part of the curriculum. Training in abortion procedures, if done, is generally part of residency training in obstetrics and gynecology or family medicine (occurring after medical school for those who chose to specialize in these selected fields of medicine); and Brown, like many institutions, provides residents with moral objections the option of opting out of abortion training.
While the protester going by the name of Jane Doe contends that protests like these are the only way to promote discussion and change people's minds, we contend that the reverse effect is far more likely. The protest used two poorly-chosen tactics. First, they used inaccurate information, undermining the efforts of many individual pro-life medical students, as well as Brown Medical Students for Life, which have worked hard to build credibility as reasoned and informed individuals, interested in promoting a genuine dialogue about the ethics of abortion and other life issues.
Second, they chose to display graphic pictures of aborted children. This tactic is largely premised on the idea that abortion is wrong because it looks gross.
Trust us, many things in medicine look gross (childbirth included) but that does not make them wrong. Furthermore, parading around the images of these poor, dead children is completely disrespectful to them, and is at odds with the call that their lives should be respected.
While the aim of the misinformed protesters may have been to stigmatize those performing abortions, the impact of efforts such as these is far more likely to be the further stigmatization of pro-lifers as people uninformed and out of touch with reality who need to resort to scare tactics.
We encourage those who are truly interested in promoting a culture of life among those in medical training to pray for physicians and medical students, support those choosing to opt out of residency abortion training, help them find pro-life physician mentors who can help and guide them, advocate for conscience clauses, and fund speakers who have the expertise to engage medical students and others from all backgrounds about the ethical problems of abortion. Please do not make being pro-life medical students any harder for us than it is already.
Erin T. Kelly
Brown Med '11
Brenna Sullivan
Brown Med '11
President, Brown Medical Students for Life
Editor’s note: The reporter did attempt to get comments from Brown, but calls were not returned by press time.
