The death penalty in California was put on hold earlier this week as the state could not find a certified physician willing to stand by and ensure that the inmate experienced no pain. One of the main reasons that no doctor agreed to participate is that many medical groups argued that assisting in an execution would violate the Hippocratic Oath, a set of ethical rules for doctors first laid out by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates.

I agree with them. Doctors should save lives, not hasten their end. Even if you are a supporter of the death penalty, you could still understand that executions should be carried out by correctional department personnel, not physicians.

But I do wonder why these same groups, such as the American Medical Association, will not come out against abortion.

The Classical version of the oath is very specific when it comes to abortion:

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

Now, most medical schools administer some modified version of the oath that does not explicitly forbid abortion. However, in nearly every case, the graduate still swears to not use his skills to end a life.
You cannot convince me that a fetus in or beyond the second trimester is not a person. By that point, the unborn child can blink, move their lips, and make some small movements. Most of the organs are also fully functional. Even if you believe that it is not yet a human being, you have to admit that it is a living thing not absolutely subject to the mother’s control.
That should be reason enough for groups like the AMA to oppose at least late term abortion. But they will not. In fact, they are doing quite the opposite.
The American Medical Association has this position on Partial Birth Abortion, or D&X:
According to the scientific literature, there does not appear to be any identified situation in which intact D&X is the only appropriate procedure to induce abortion, and ethical concerns have been raised about intact D&X. The AMA recommends that the procedure not be used unless alternative procedures pose materially greater risk to the woman. The physician must, however, retain the discretion to make that judgment, acting within standards of good medical practice and in the best interest of the patient

So, in essence, while they believe that it should be discouraged, they want to allow doctors to decide whether it is appropriate to stab a fully viable child in the forehead and suck it’s brains out as it is traveling down the birth canal. Hippocrates would be proud.
This is not the only time where the AMA and other medical organizations have supported these un-Hippocratic positions. The organizations frequently align with groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL to oppose common sense regulations such as Parental Notification and anesthesia for the unborn child.
So while these groups made such a fuss about the Hippocratic Oath prohibiting doctors from participating in executions of persons who have been convicted of heinous crimes (and I reiterate, I agree with them), they refuse to oppose late term abortion which kills an innocent life.
I call it Hippocratic Hypocrisy