Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 14, 1995 TAG: 9502140093
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ellen Goodman
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Dr. Foster doesn't need a security guard - yet - to go about his daily practice. No one is picketing his house or targeting his family. It's only his chance to become surgeon general that's under attack. The weapons this time are the fax and the phone, the press release and the media.
A few years ago, Dr. Foster was one of George Bush's thousand points of light. A few days ago, he became Bill Clinton's cautious pick for the bully pulpit from which Joycelyn Elders was so unceremoniously evicted.
Now it appears that this ob-gyn, a man who delivered 10,000 babies, a former dean of a medical school and the force behind a teen-age pregnancy-prevention program, also performed abortions in his 30-year practice. This safe choice has become another target in the abortion war zone.Suddenly, Sen. Bob Dole doesn't ``like what I hear, what I read.'' Sen. Orrin Hatch says there are ``some very troubling things concerning his nomination.'' Sen. Trent Lott thinks ``it is in serious trouble.'' Now the pro-life movement, on the basis of a dubious transcript claims he performed 700 abortions. The president has added an ``if'' to his support for the Tennessean: ``if the facts are as I understand them to be.''
Dr. Foster is losing his footing, his hold on this job. He is sliding down the verbal slippery slope that is greased so regularly by extremists in the pro-life movement.
On their slope, doctors who perform abortions are labeled ``abortion doctors'' as if they were a species beyond the medical pale. ``Abortion docs'' are further marginalized as ``abortionists'' with the M.D. excised altogether. Finally they are branded as ``murderers.''
Through this subtle process a doctor is turned into a demon. At the very bottom of the slope are found the bodies of two doctors in Pensacola, Fla., and two clinic workers in Brookline, Mass. Now, other doctors go to work wearing bulletproof vests and go to sleep with rifles by their beds. Many are simply scared off.
No one has yet called the dignified 61-year-old Foster a ``murderer.'' At least not in public. Nor has his name been added to the hit list of the ``Deadly Dozen'' doctors distributed just last month - complete with names and addresses - by The American Coalition of Life Activists.
But the push to disqualify this man from public service because he performed abortions is another way to make doctors outcasts. It's part of the effort to make abortion a pariah medical service - illegitimate if not illegal. It's part of the plan by opponents to win by intimidation. To target what they see as the ``weak link'' in abortion rights - the 3,000 or so doctors who perform most of the 1.5 million abortions a year.
If Dr. Foster is banned from public office because he performed a legal medical procedure, then what about the others? The doctors, the nurses, the counselors, the clinic workers, indeed, the women who have had abortions? They would all, as pro-choice leader Kate Michelman said, be branded with the same scarlet ``A.''
I am uncomfortable with those who defend Dr. Foster on the grounds that he only performed a few abortions or that he did them for good reasons - for the health of the mother, for rape or incest. If his appointment hinges on the right number of abortions or the right kind of abortions, it is still a litmus test on the right to perform abortions.
As head of the public-health service, the surgeon general is in the business of prevention. Public-health workers are the medical people who go to the source of the problem.
In this case, the source of the problem at the front of national consciousness is unwed teen-age pregnancy. This is where Dr. Foster has spent his energy, in a program called appropriately, ``I Have a Future.'' It's the campaign he's been assigned to wage by the president.
Doctors of Foster's generation are old enough to remember when women died from illegal abortions. They are old enough to have seen the need for this choice and old enough to have seen the sorrow of facing such a choice. It's not a cliche, but a lifetime of experience, that prompts such a man to say of abortion: ``My wish is that it be safe, legal and rare.''
This is what most Americans wish. How then did Foster become such a tempting target?
We live in an era when doctors are being threatened and killed. Their names are on "Wanted" posters. Their clinics are on terrorists' maps. Yet politicians still believe they can appease the people in this increasingly radical movement.
Now Henry Foster, a ``safe choice,'' a man who made his mark working to reduce teen-age pregnancies, is under attack. And now too we will find out which politicians have the courage to defend one doctor from the folks who make up the hit lists.
- The Boston Globe
by CNB