I love people.

Today I shared some things with my "interprofessional leadership" group. I told them why I wanna help people. I even made a pledge:

I pledge before God to treat patients and everyone I interact with according to Biblical principles of honor and respect, working diligently to protect the physical and spiritual health with all the knowledge I have access to with regards to the situations I am medically involved in. I will uphold the law of the land and the context I am practicing in, and if laws impinge on Biblical values, will discontinue practices which impede my ethical conscience. I commit to pouring personal and professional energy into obtaining all available knowledge and skills to be adequately equipped as a physical and emotional healer for both domestic and international patients I hope to see during my lifetime.

I said humans were valuable:

“What does it mean to be human?” This is a question, the answer to, informs the reason I choose to spend my life with those who need health care and why I want to dedicate my life to public service. I was raised in a family rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition of morality, and it’s where I garnered a deep sense of respect for the sanctity of human life—what it means to be human. A human being isn’t valuable because they’ve done anything for anyone else or because they can give back or because they take too much. They’re not valuable because they’re more developed, smarter, or richer. A human being is more valuable than the GDP of all the wealthiest nations. Human beings are absolutely priceless and worth sacrificing for."

Today I don't think I was understood but I created a visual after the fact to be sure I was sure what I meant.

To Fundraise

Tomorrow is a pregnancy center fundraiser.

Funds are important.

But hearts are more so important. I can't give anything but $50 of Uncle Sam's 7.5% interest loan money tomorrow night, but anthropology has no cost.

Loving lives is free.

fetal heart

1. In Cultural Anthropology , anthropology is “the study of people—their origins, their development, and contemporary variations, wherever and whenever they have been found….anthropology aims to describe what it means to be human.”

Abortion is a sobering reality: one in three American women have an abortion. 50 million Americans ARE NOT HERE WITH US. It’s worthy of tears, frustration, despair, and rage. But there is hope; there is always hope for change. Our country is not one to shy away from tough challenges of injustice.

Ethics

Some days I don’t do exactly what I’m supposed to do. In the past 48 hours, I have decided that I want to pursue medical bioethics research personally and corporately. I want to found a medical ethics collegiate society, but I have to understand the significance and the need of this undertaking. Today I perused free research to try to get a taste of what noise is out there in the bioethics realm.

Three major incidences prompted this recent interest:

1) January of this year I met Terri Schiaivo’s brother Bob in DC. Bob experienced the tragedy of ethics gone awry and watched his sister starve. I cannot forget the despairing tone in his voice when he said, “I really envy you Pro-Lifers because you all have a voice and platform. I don’t see any victory for the end-of-life ethical arena.” Bob Shiaivo, I would love to prove you wrong.

2) As a Physician Assistant 1^st year student, I read for a class current Hippocratic Oaths that medical students recite before beginning their practice. Only 5% of oaths had caveats against euthanasia and abortion. I wasn’t shocked. But I was disappointed.

3) Ryan, a nursing student in one of my class thanked me for sharing so lucidly in a group discussion that my life goal was to speak for human rights in medicine, specifically for preborns both domestically and abroad. Ryan needs more courage as do I. He gives me courage to keep on.

I will write and synthesize into realization what medical bioethics truly is, and where the preborn fits into this.

here's to being human, a glorious and dangerously beautiful thing.