Editor's note. This first appeared in "LifeWatch," the official publication of the Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality, and is reprinted with permission. You can subscribe by writing to LifeWatch, PO Box 306, Cottleville, MO 63338.

In 1959, the year I graduated from medical school, there were few if any medical schools that offered courses in medical ethics.  The defining ethic of a physician, as expressed by one of my professors, was the duty to save a life, relieve pain, and correct deformity.
My first confrontation with a serious ethical dilemma occurred when I was a resident in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Colorado Medical Center in 1961-1965. 

There were uncommon occasions when we performed abortions for women with very severe heart disease, when pregnancy was a serious threat to their lives.  In Colorado at that time, induced abortion was illegal, unless it was performed to save the life of the mother, in which case a physician was protected by a statutory defense.  No consultation was needed, since the physician's judgment was trusted.  Such abortions were indeed rare.

Then came the rubella epidemic of 1964.  We illegally performed abortions on women who had rubella infections early in pregnancy because of the 25% risk that the baby would be born with one or more of the defects associated with the rubella syndrome: congenital heart defects, deafness, blindness, and mental retardation.  Most of these abortions were performed in the first trimester of pregnancy, but a substantial number were performed in the second trimester.  What became very clear to me, as I performed one abortion after another, is that the bits and pieces that were being curetted out of the uterus were indeed tiny body parts of tiny human beings: arms, hands, legs, ears, shoulders, they were all there, but scattered about in the bucket.  I could not avoid the obvious-in each abortion, whatever good service I was performing for the woman, I was killing a tiny human being.   My internal strife about abortion was magnified by, as much as anything, my involvement with fetal transfusions.  In 1964, the same year that I was performing abortions during the rubella epidemic, I also performed the first successful intrauterine fetal transfusion in Colorado for Rh disease.  On one day I was going to great lengths to correct in utero a baby's severe anemia so the baby could live long enough to be born and survive; and on another day I was pumping a hypertonic salt solution into the uterus to kill a fetus of about the same age.

Between 1965 and 1967, when I was in the private practice of Ob/Gyn but still working as a halftime faculty member at the medical school, I somehow partitioned off my new found awareness of the illogical and contradictory notion of abortion as a "therapeutic measure."  Indeed, all induced abortions were called "therapeutic abortions." I became caught up in the rhetoric of, and enthusiasm for, abortion-law liberalization in Colorado.  The effect was championed by Governor Richard Lamm and resulted in Colorado being the first sate to legalize abortion.  In addition to the emerging feminist claim that women had the right to do with their bodies as they wished, the rationale for changing the laws that restricted abortion included the claim that it would reduce the number of "back-alley abortions" that resulted in serious maternal illness and, on rare occasions, death.  The new law allowed abortions for certain medical and psychiatric indications, rape and incest, and serious fetal abnormalities.

This legislative accomplishment necessitated a little known, and never publicized, amendment to statutes involving child abuse.  Child-abuse statutes define the life of a child beginning at conception.  The more recent abortion statute changed the definition of the beginning of a child's life from conception to birth.  (The research that resulted in the first description of the "battered child syndrome" was published by doctors at the University of Colorado Medical Center, and Colorado was one of the first states to enact legislation providing for mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse.  So, ironically, my home state was the first to protect children from intentional abuse and the first state to legalize the abuse of pre-born children.)

Even though the liberalized abortion statute rather narrowly defined the serious medical and psychiatric circumstances for which an induced abortion could be performed, the psychiatric indications were stretched to cover almost any situation in which a woman could be regarded as being upset or inconvenienced by her pregnancy.  The liberal view of abortion was eventually codified in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that made the United States the most permissive abortion nation in the world.

By 1969, when I finished my two-year tour of duty in the Army Medical Corps, I had arrived at a firm pro-life, anti-abortion position.  It was not a sudden epiphany or bolt-out-of-the-blue experience.  It was a slow, creeping, incessantly rational awakening to the awareness that should have been crystal clear to me from the first: there is something inherently wrong with killing a human being to solve the problem of another human being. 

It is a great sorrow to me that the sub-specialty of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, in which I am board certified, has increasingly become preoccupied with prenatal testing (blood and amniotic fluid tests and ultrasound examinations) in pursuit of finding fetuses with congenital abnormalities so that they can be killed before they are born.  As physicians who allegedly care simultaneously for two patients, a woman and her unborn child, it is a tragedy that we often accomplish the task by deliberately killing one patient to serve the other.

How has my Christian faith related to my pro-life position?  It is enough to say that I believe that the unborn, in the state of complete innocence, defenselessness, and vulnerability, are among "the least of these," who should be subjects of our care and concern, according to the admonishment of our Lord (Matthew 25:40).  This should have always been clear to me, though I was blind to it when I first performed abortions.  Since childhood my religion has been defined by The Book of Common Prayer, which is to say, I am a confirmed Episcopalian in the Anglican Communion.  As you can imagine, I am dismayed that the Episcopal Church is a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.  Membership in this organization essentially defines the position of the Episcopal Church as supporting the right of the woman to terminate a pregnancy and thereby end the life of her unborn offspring (embryo, fetus, baby-call the unborn what you like) regardless of the reason.  Much rhetoric is used to mollify this position, but I personally find it unpersuasive.  Fortunately, there are Episcopalians who are pro-life (www.anglicansforlife.org) , although they are a minority among both the laity and clergy.

For reasons that may seem contradictory and irrational, I choose to continue in my profession and in my church to serve as a witness, for the pro-life cause, from within-rather than to criticize as an outsider.

Dr. Bowes received his medical degree from the University of Colorado in 1955.  His internship was at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Hanover, NH.  This was followed by one year of General Practice residency, a year of fellowship in fetal physiology, and three years of residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver.  Following two years of private practice in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Denver and two years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Vietnam conflict, he was a member of the full-time faculty in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Colorado for fourteen years.  In 1982, he joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina as a full professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.  In June or 1999, he retired and is now professor emeritus.  His major professional interests include high-risk obstetrics, pre-term birth, and all aspects of labor and delivery.  From 1995 to 1999, he served on the Committee oof Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and was, for the last two years of that time, chairman of the committee.  In 2003, he served on The Reproductive Genetics Advisory Committee of The Genetics and Public Policy Center (The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute at John Hopkins University).  From 1999 to 2007, he served on the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and currently he is Chair of the Ethics Committee of the University of North Carolina Hospitals.