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One pulls out a gun and shots the other in the guts. The victim starts bleeding profusely from this very painful life threatening injury. He arrives at the ER accompanied by the police. The doctor on call at that moment is a member of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. The doctor asks the officer what happened. The officer tells him that he was shot in a drug deal gone bad while holding a quantity of fentanyl. In a righteous shout the doctor says, "I will not treat this man because he is a sinner and I can not sully my person by saving his life". Before another doctor arrives the injured man bleeds out and dies.

So under the same argument made in the case of a medical abortion gone wrong, is it acceptable that the pious doctor allowed the man to die? We know that not only was he sinning at the time of injury, he was also taking part in a criminal act. Not only that, but he was endangering other sinning criminal drug users by pushing fentanyl. All around we will all agree he was a bad man. Does that further justify letting him die? Isn't the world better off with one less drug dealer?

Before you answer those questions let's look at a slightly different scenario. You are an emergency surgeon working in the MASH next to Hawkeye Pierce. One wounded man after another arrives at your operating table. The doctor doesn't check to see what uniform he is wearing. The doctor treats him and does his best to save his life. A wounded man is a wounded man and everyone gets treated the same regardless of the uniform. Never mind that he is "the enemy". Never mind that a hour before he had pulled the trigger and attempted to kill the wounded the man you had just treated. The doctors treat the wounded enemy not because they are covered by the Geneva Convention, but because doctors save lives because that is what they do. Something like all life is sacred.

Contrast a MASH doctor working knee deep in blood in a war zone with his sensibilities attacked every moment of the day by the madness and immorality of war, with the smug lovers of "unborn life", basically overgrown snow flakes, in a suburban ER. The first does everything he can to repair the damage. The second stands around passing judgement on his patient. Maybe war has something to teach us here.

Sorry about the length. Rant over.