This is a photograph I took in 2012 at La Piedad Cemetery in McAllen, Texas. It is of the grave of Rosaura (Rosie) Jimenez, the first known fatality due to the Republican "Hyde Amendment" that prohibited Medicaid from paying for safe legal abortion care. A stark reminder of the cruel results of Republican "alternative facts."
Introducing myself, I am a physician (M.D.) long and extensively trained and experienced in the practice of both psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology. From both of these disciplines I have gained an enhanced degree of respect, sensitivity, and empathy for women that was largely missing from my growing up in a small north Texas city in the 1940’s and 1950’s, as a result of which I spent the latter thirty-plus years of my active medical practice (now retired) as a provider of abortion care. I am also, quite comfortably and proudly, an atheist – a naturalist and secular humanist, eschewing the dogmatic mythical supernaturalism of all religions and embracing the evidence-based factual reality of science and the rationality of secular philosophy. In regards to the religious commitments and leanings of other abortion care providers, as far as I can tell the proportion of atheists to religious believers of all types among the providers of abortion care corresponds roughly to that of society in general, with the majority of abortion care providers and supporters of women’s right to safe, legal abortion care self-identifying as Christian or Jewish (just not the extreme and theocracy-seeking versions of any religions that motivate activists of the antiabortion, so-called “pro-life” movement to coercive fascism and domestic terrorism extending even to murder of those of us who refuse to jump onto their bandwagon of heartless misogyny).
In 2014 I wrote and published an Amazon Kindle e-book strongly supportive of women’s right to safe, legal abortion titled Pro-“Life” Is Pro-LIE. In 2016 I USPS-mailed a packet of announcement and information about my e-book to, among others, selected so-called “pro-life” politicians and activists. I received the following letter, oozing with mindless pablum, misconceptions, falsehoods, and nothing else, from the office of one of these politicians, medical doctor and Texas state Senator Donna Campbell, M.D., who had been a strong supporter of the infamous sweeping and draconian antiabortion bill, HB2, as it was railroaded by know-nothing and uncaring Republican ideologues through the state legislature into state law, destined to bring about, among other unconstitutional atrocities, the abrupt closing of most of the facilities providing safe, legal abortion care in the state – of course, this among other tragedies, as those of us who knew and gave a damn had tried to tell the Republican drones as they, in a spectacular show of smug irresponsibility, shut their eyes, stuck their fingers in their ears, and yodeled, resulting in droves of desperate women and teenage girls seeking dangerous underground criminal abortions, some across the southern border of the state in Mexico, some in the state, and some in very dangerous attempts at do it yourself abortion absent any expert guidance. As we knew would result, women and teenage girls suffered and were seriously injured and died (and still are) as the result of HB2 – as mind-abducted, theocratic Republican fascists joyously danced and high-fived each other, “sure” they had done “God’s work” and were on a fast track to “Heaven,” as they believed their long-since self-chosen “alternative facts” had promised them.
Definition: “ALTERNATIVE FACTS”: disingenuous crap, lies
The following is a copy of the letter of simplistic, disingenuous crap (i.e., “alternative facts” in the neologistic delusion of that Republican “genius,” Kellyanne Conway) that I received from the office of state Senator Donna Campbell, M.D.
DONNA CAMPBELL, M.D.
TEXAS STATE SENATOR
DISTRICT 25
May 10, 2016
Dr. William West, M.D.
P.O. Box 1002
Cedar Hill, TX 75106
Dear Dr. West:
I apologize for the delay in responding to the information you mailed to our office back in April regarding the book you have published. We do review and take seriously all feedback from citizens across the State of Texas, so thank you for contacting Senator Campbell to express your concerns. Senator Campbell appreciates that you took the time to write.
We share your dismay at the death of Rosie Jimenez, and the potential death of other women who believe unsafe abortion is their only option. As a medical doctor, Senator Campbell worked to require minimum standards for abortion facilities. This reflects the Senator's concern for the safety of all citizens. Though the Senator always has been and will remain adamantly pro-life, the abortion-facilities bill was not meant to decrease access to abortion facilities. It was meant to place the responsibility for maintaining appropriate standards on the providers of this lucrative service.
Senator Campbell is also a dedicated supporter of the growing number of crisis pregnancy centers across our state. These facilities offer women options to abortion, and unconditional love no matter what their decision about their unborn child may be. Alternatives to abortion not only spare the lives of the unborn, but also spare expectant mothers the remorse that so often accompanies abortion, as well as any risk to their health from the abortion procedure.
Thanks again for sharing your views on this important matter.
Sincerely,
Kelly Follis,
New Braunfels District Office
Senator Donna Campbell, M.D.
Now, my reply to that pathetic letter:
William West, M.D.
Dallas, Texas
williamwestmd@swbell.net
General and Child Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynecology
(Forced into retirement by malfeasant Republican government)
An open letter to Texas State Senator/Medical Doctor Donna Campbell:
Dear Senator/Doctor Campbell:
First, just to briefly set the stage for the drama to follow:
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Thomas Jefferson
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” - Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic and political activist
“21.6 million women experience an unsafe illegal abortion worldwide each year; 18.5 million of these occur in developing countries. Some 47,000 women per year are estimated to lose their lives from the complications of unsafe abortion, almost all of which could have been prevented through better access to sexuality education, fertility awareness, contraception, and especially safe abortion services.” - World Health Organization (WHO), 2008
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. - Thomas Jefferson
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind-folded fear. - Thomas Jefferson
“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence, but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where¹s the harm? September 11th changed all that.” – Richard Dawkins, English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and writer
“The 21st century should be an age of reason, yet irrational, militant faith is back on the march. Religious extremism is implicated in the world’s most bitter and unending conflicts. America has its own fundamentalists. Science, we are told, should not tread on the toes of theology. But why should scientists tiptoe respectfully away? The time has come for people of reason to say ‘Enough is enough.’ Religious faith discourages independent thought, it’s divisive, and it’s dangerous.” - Richard Dawkins
"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." - Thomas Jefferson
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie— deliberate, contrived and dishonest— but the myth— persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” - John F. Kennedy
“You cannot convince a believer of anything for their belief is not based on evidence, but on a deep seated emotional need to believe.” - Carl Sagan, astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences
“To argue with a person who has renounced reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” - Thomas Paine, English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he inspired the rebels in 1776.
“If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” - George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789
“They (the clergy) believe that any portion of power confided to me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly, for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800
“They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as the truth rather than truth as the authority.” - G. Massey, Egyptologist
And you may quote me on this one:
No matter how strongly you merely BELIEVE that you KNOW what you merely BELIEVE that you KNOW, in spite of the lack of supportive fact and even in the face of contradictory fact, you merely BELIEVE it - and you might be wrong. Very wrong!
Question: Why is it so hard to change or ameliorate even the most preposterous of BELIEFS that have NO known support in actual fact, even when clinging to such BELIEFS causes distress, pain, closed-minded ignorance, unyielding intolerance and conflict, and failure – and even striving to inflict such misery upon others?
Answer: It is because people tend to strongly prefer the false security of familiar misery over the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.
In other, simpler, words: Bullshit stinks but it’s warm (“bullshit” as a metaphor for what in contemporary Republicanese is called “alternative facts”).
Think about it.
Now, on to the substance of this letter:
Thank you so much for the letter from your aide, Kelly Follis, “thanking” me for notifying you of my book. My reply to Ms. Follis’s letter follows. It is comprehensive but far from all-inclusive.
I smiled as I read the letter, but also felt a pang of sadness for you and Ms. Follis. I was conflicted: should I laugh or cry? Oh my god! Did she really write that??? Did she really mean that??? Did she really devote a moment’s thought to it???
You see, I couldn’t have hoped for a more clear and succinct illustration and validation than that letter of the theme of my book as expressed by the title, “Pro-Life” is Pro-LIE; They Don’t Care That Women Suffer and DIE (available as an e-book on amazon.com for a mere $0.99 at this time).
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I regret that it is too late to edit my book to include that letter with the caption “Here is a great example that reflects the kind of willful and intransigent ignorance, fascism, and rationalized advocacy of crimes against humanity that I wrote about in my book.” I’m sure that supporting my thesis was not her intent, but more like a compound Freudian slip leaping out of her unconscious mind blinded to reality by religion inculcated and reinforced adherence to unfounded authoritarian assertion (a thought disorder that I refer to as “abduction of the mind”), but thank you anyway. By the way, if you believe that “fascism” is too strong a word I suggest that you merely consult the dictionary and compare the definition of that word to the behavior of you and your Republican colleagues as you and they, in ill-informed, misguided, and mindless lock-goosestep, railroaded the passage into law of the sweeping, draconian antiabortion bill, HB2, in the summer of 2013.
Here, I’ll help you out. Consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, one finds the authoritative definition of FASCISM: An authoritarian and nationalistic system of government and social organization. In general use: extreme authoritarian, oppressive, or intolerant views or practices.
On YouTube you can still see a most dramatic and appalling, textbook-like example of fascist oppression: the brutal removal (for merely attempting to exercise her constitutional right to testify before a government hearing) from a legislative public hearing of a well-informed, clear thinking, and concerned citizen, Sarah Slamen, by state troopers acting upon the arbitrary, rigid, unyielding, and callous - and fascist - dictate of state Senator Ann Nelson.
Definition: CONSERVATIVE: a once respectable political ideology that over the past three to four decades has devolved into a euphemism for distinctly un-American, extreme right wing theocratic fascism in the United States, especially in still socially backward states like those of the old Confederacy, such as Texas. Synonym: REPUBLICAN (not your “Honest Abe’s” party anymore).
Ms. Follis, in her ill-informed and less than honest letter, stated, “We share your dismay at the death of Rosie Jimenez, and the potential death of other women who believe unsafe abortion is their only option.”
I feel sure that Rosie knew there were other options and also knew that she was seriously risking her life in choosing to have a dangerous illegal abortion. That she did is a measure of her desperation – desperation to a degree that often drives women (and men) to suicide. She was also painfully aware that she had been denied safe, legal abortion care by a “conservative” Republican fascist bigot, the late Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois and sponsor of the Hyde Amendment to the House Appropriations bill that prohibited use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions through Medicaid. One in four low-income women is forced to carry an unintended and desperately unwanted pregnancy to term due to those federal restrictions on Medicaid coverage. Rosie was poor and single with a five year old daughter. She was seriously and quite successfully pursuing her college plan to become an educator of young children. Ms. Follis (and I presume you) claims to share my “dismay.” “Dismay?” Is that the best you can do? Is that all you feel for her and the multitudes of other women who find themselves in a terribly similar crisis? Are you really so callous and cruel that you don’t share even a tiny bit my HORROR that such callous and deadly discrimination can occur in this country? And what of Ms. Follis’ mention of the “potential death of other women?” It is not a “potential.” It is actual, ongoing fact - a well-established reality that you and she should have known about. I suppose that perhaps some of those infamous Republican “alternative facts” blinded you to reality.
The cover picture of my book is a photograph I took in 2012 at La Piedad Cemetery in McAllen, Texas. It is of the grave of Rosaura (Rosie) Jimenez, who died in 1977 from sepsis-induced organ failure after almost a week of excruciating pain and anguish in a McAllen hospital following an illegal abortion obtained from a local midwife. In desperation she had previously sought an even cheaper illegal abortion just across the border in Mexico, where she was given a hormone which failed to terminate her pregnancy.
Rosie was a financially disadvantaged, twenty-seven year old unmarried mother and college student pursuing her goal of becoming a special education teacher. She already had a five year old daughter for whom she was the sole support. She couldn't afford private health insurance so she was on Texas Medicaid. Tragically for her, in 1976 U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde, a Republican from Illinois and a devout so-called “pro-life” Roman Catholic, had introduced a restrictive antiabortion law, since known as the Hyde Amendment, that had gone into effect in 1977, barring Medicaid from covering an abortion. The result was that Rosie was unable to afford a safe legal abortion in Texas. As is the case with many women and teenage girls with unwanted pregnancies, Rosie was so desperate to end her pregnancy that she was willing to gamble with her life to obtain a dangerous illegal abortion. She did obtain an illegal abortion that she could afford, but it ended up costing her her life and leaving her daughter an orphan. Hers was the FIRST known death in the nation attributable to the Hyde Amendment (Yee-Haw! Another FIRST for Texas!). The tragic story of Rosie is one of many similar cases that have since resulted when desperate women and teenage girls were blocked by discriminatory laws from acquiring safe legal abortion care.
Moral: Never underestimate a person’s feelings of desperation and hopelessness.
Rosie was the first known, but far from the last, to die from dangerous illegal abortion due to the Hyde Amendment after the January 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade resulted in safe legal abortion being available and accessible throughout the United States to women and teenage girls who could afford it. There have been more similarly unnecessary injuries and deaths from illegal abortion since hers. Tragically, our Texas Tea Party Republican dominated government under our willfully ignorant, disingenuous, intransigently ignorant, rigidly opinionated, über-Godly Governor, Rick “Oops” Perry, saw to it that there will be many more dangerous illegal abortions due to their sweeping, über-draconian anti-abortion law, HB2, a law that originated in collaboration between the über-extreme so-called “pro-life” organization, Americans United for Life, and the Republican über-right wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that has virtually wiped out safe legal abortion in Texas and is being introduced by Republican legislators in state legislatures all over the country.
FIRST, please accept my assurance that I deeply and sincerely believe in and support religious freedom for all people and all religions and the freedom of no religion as well. And that these freedoms of religion and from religion are absolutely fundamental constitutional rights of all citizens guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. I oppose any attempt by anyone to deny these freedoms – certainly including any attempt by anyone to deny these freedoms by requiring anyone else to adhere to any religious belief system. That said, I urge anyone to believe what they believe they must believe but to carefully and thoughtfully consider what they believe and why, and to refrain from attempting to force their beliefs on others by fear (i.e., terrorism) or by law. And it is my strong belief, supported by compelling evidence, that religious beliefs, whether Islamic or Christian or any other, especially when twisted into zealous extremes, accomplish much more harm than good and are incompatible with human rationality, knowledge, understanding, health, happiness, security, and even survival, especially in the 21st century and beyond.
Religious liberty is not the freedom to establish your religious beliefs as the only acceptable, and even the only legal, beliefs about religion. Anyone who believes otherwise stands for religious coercion, the opposite of religious liberty.
SECOND: Anyone who is not filled with dread and outrage at the sorry state of this world is not paying attention and needs to wake up.
My book is my best shot at briefly explaining why I believe that. I am a realist, a naturalist, an atheist, and a secular humanist. I do not believe speculative claims of supernatural causes and influence which are the bedrock of all religious beliefs, no matter how ancient, pervasive, and entrenched they are, and I am deeply compassionate toward all sentient living beings.
Although I am therefore not a believer in the supernatural claims of religion, I do not deny that Jesus and other prominent religious icons throughout human history have offered some good advice for us humans. And I am quite fearful that I am placing myself in mortal danger by means of honestly expressing myself in my book. It is written that Jesus advised against such open honesty in that famous Sermon on the Mount:
”Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces.”
- Matthew 7:6
I expect that there will be some “dogs” and “swines” who read my book and who read this letter.
Well (gulp!), hoping not to be trampled and torn to pieces by devoted followers of the mythical half man/half “god” who is known as “the loving prince of peace,” here continues this letter:
WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH TEXAS? As an obstetrician/gynecologist, a psychiatrist, and a veteran of over thirty years as an abortion provider in Texas who has now been forced to quit by the frankly insane, dishonest, callous, and/or willfully ignorant Republican state government under the asinine leadership of ignorant, arrogant, über-”Godly” Governor Rick “Oops” Perry (and now, even worse, über-”Godly” Governor Greg Abbott) I have some things to say about what’s the matter with Texas that I believe are not only well worth saying, but desperately need saying – all the more so as the anti-woman tragedy in Texas is being swept all over the country by smug, mind-abducted Tea Party Republican politicians, destined to bring suffering and/or death to tens of thousands of women and teenage girls as long as it remains standing. And because this Republican lunacy and callous dishonesty in an expansive array of issues is also befouling and desecrating every other aspect and dimension of our national character and global influence.
Mind-abducting, man-made extreme religious belief stops a thinking brain, and its mind-abducted believers gullibly fall prey to specious lies (Oops! I meant “alternative facts”) and delusional beliefs, deny reality, blight politics and law, callously cause needless injury, suffering, and DEATH as they all the while pretend otherwise, even to themselves, and threaten the stability and LIFE-supporting integrity of the earth. Extreme religious belief in ancient prescientific myth and superstition still being so influential in determining our fate in the 21st century is a lot like NASA trying to power a vehicle into space with a steam engine – a giant leap forward compared to an ox cart of biblical times but neither quite destined for space travel. Don’t you agree, at least on the part about the steam engine or ox cart being unfit for exploring the cosmos? You do? Good! (Always nice to agree on some common ground.)
I can only hope there is still a basis for hope. We live in a time in which no matter where one turns there seems to be very little, really, to feel happy and secure about – a time in which we inhabitants of the earth are rushing along a course toward unthinkable catastrophe unless major entrenched, intransigent, and pervasive social, legal, and political trends are reversed by the knowledge, understanding, honesty, and reason that is readily available to us all, thanks to science, the internet, and logical critical thinking, but far too widely and too aggressively ignored, resisted, and denied under the influence of “sacred,” but false, extreme religious authority that “sanctifies” ignorance and denial of reality to protect its power, influence, and wealth – a time in which it matters more than ever before that if we don’t change the direction in which we are going we will wind up in the unthinkable tragedy toward which we are blindly headed. My book is mainly focused on the factual truth of reproductive health care for women and teenage girls, including safe legal abortion care, but about other urgent issues as well - about the flagrantly dishonest, misinformed, and willfully ignorant abdication of honesty, reason, knowledge, and common decency through the characteristics of dysfunctional thought that define Tea Party Republican rule in the nation that more than any other influences the entire world. I hope to correct some of the blatant misconceptions of abortion care that have been fostered and set in many people’s minds by the decades-long barrage of exaggeration, deliberate distortion of fact and reason, sensationalism, demonization, and other manifestations of deliberately misleading false propaganda (“alternative facts”) from the so-called “pro-life” movement, including representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and extreme fundamentalist (or “evangelical”) Christianity in general and the contemporary Republican Party. And about urgent issues other than abortion care as well. Anyone who is not outraged and terrified by what the Religious Right, the Tea Party, the grossly misnamed, so-called “pro-life” movement, and the Republican Party are doing to corrupt, deceive, and mangle America and the entire world is either not paying attention or smothered and blinded by their own unfounded, irrational, ignorant, uninformed, misinformed, and unreasonable beliefs, in far too many cases clung to as if to a life raft in a raging sea of their own making.
Dr./Sen. Campbell, in your own smug, shallow, specious, and sappy public utterances of how HB2 would “make abortion safer for women” you were dead wrong. Spectacularly so. You, as a physician yourself, should have known that without its being explained over and over again to you, with generous presentation of clear, scientific, factual evidence, but even though it was pointed out and explained to you over and over again in the legislative hearings and floor debate, you consistently ignored all of the firm, clear factual evidence that you were dead wrong. It was as if modern scientific medicine had been repealed. I can only hope that in your medical practice you are more respectful of scientific medicine. Granting that you must be of at least somewhat above average intelligence to have made it into and through medical school, I can think of only four explanations for your avoidance of fact and reason in your legislative advocacy in this matter. Which is it in your opinion? Or do you have another explanation?
[1] You are willfully and intransigently ignorant about certain important facts that you should know about and the truth of which you should acknowledge.
[2] You are either delusional or irresponsible (or both), consistently rejecting of rational, logical thought and established scientific fact.
[3] You are a pathological liar (aka “false witness”) in clear violation of the “Big 10” commandments of the “supreme, all-knowing, and all powerful authority” you have chosen to believe in and to inflict upon all by force of law.)
[4] All of the above, OR:
[5] Do you have another explanation?
Whatever it is, it should totally disqualify you from getting within a country mile (or maybe 30 miles?) of the state capitol where laws are made (unless solely for the purpose of, say, something like joining a carefully supervised tour or delivering pizza). Tragically, of course, the same can be said of the majority (if not all) of the other mind-abducted, know-nothing, theo-fascist Republicans who currently dominate and corrupt the government of this socio-politically backward “red state.”
Offended? The shoe fits! Wear it!
It is often said that there are basically two kinds of people, distinguishable one from the other by a variety of dissimilarities of certain selected characteristics. That, of course, is an enormous oversimplification, but, really, what isn’t? (Only the future sometimes tells, but often only after centuries have passed.) There are few things that didn’t eventually turn out to be more complex than they at first appeared. There are boys and girls and men and women. And now transgender males and females, which complicates matters. There are the good guys and the bad guys, with much controversy in many cases over which is which. There are those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don’t. There are those who love to talk and those who hate to listen. (They generally don’t get along so well.) There are people in this world who just can't stand to hear something different from what they believe to be “right” - those who pretend, even to themselves, that they have the absolutely “right” answers to serious questions that have in actual fact eluded sure and true understanding by anyone for millennia - and those who instead recognize and honestly admit that they don’t know it all. There are those who do or die and those who break the rules and question why. Those who can and those who can’t. Those who do and those who don’t. Those who will and those who won’t. Those who think first and those who run with their impulses or first impressions or believe what they are told by those they believe to be authorities without daring to think otherwise – or to admit it even to themselves, often wrong but seldom in doubt. There are the sane and the insane, frequently not easily distinguishable one from the other. There are countless such dichotomies that can be observed, all more or less simplistic and some facetious but not all without merit and not all without heuristic value. There are dishonest people and honest people, those who lie even to themselves and those who face and tell the truth even to themselves, a dichotomy that closely parallels the dichotomy that most interests me and which is of great significance in the affairs of human beings: that of believers vs. skeptics, often indistinguishable from insane vs. sane, in that order. There is nothing frivolous or facetious about this one. The skeptics are much more likely to make a good buy on a good used car than the more gullible believers – and to actually face actual facts and to accept and be truthful about them, even to themselves. These markedly different two types of people are everywhere all around us every day and exert enormous and widespread influences and effects upon us all in a multitude of ways, including determining the beginnings and ends of wars and the outcomes of political elections and thus the nature of governing policies and laws. To an epic extent the skeptics and the believers are the good guys and the bad guys, in that order – an order that is way too often turned upside down by traditional belief.
Skeptics are those who do not just passively believe what they are told but question why and insist on factual evidence, not authoritarian assertions, to guide their thoughts and actions. Believers do not think and look for factual evidence to guide them but instead just uncritically swallow whole what their self-chosen “authorities,” generally mind-abducted believers themselves in “authorities” of their own choosing, have proclaimed to be so on the basis of nothing but such things as fulfillment of their obstinate narcissistic need to believe they are absolutely “right” and the creation, through indoctrinated disordered and irrational processes of thought, of a myth-based false sense of security through belief in emotionalized traditional fuzzy dogma and misty ideals that have no factual or rational foundation whatsoever. For believers factual evidence is dishonestly denied, ignored, and often fiercely denounced in order to protect and sustain clearly delusional but cherished beliefs that have long been hallowed by tradition. However, regardless of how strongly one merely believes that he or she knows what he or she merely believes that he or she knows, without confirmatory factual evidence or even in the face of clearly contradictory evidence, such as in the prime example of religious belief, one merely believes it. Although routinely and aggressively denied by believers as if by reflex, no one really knows anything that he or she merely believes that he or she knows and he or she might very well be very wrong.
An inconvenient truth will always be less popular than a reassuring lie (I mean “alternative fact.”) It is not merely your right, but your responsibility, to question everything.
“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.” - Frantz Fanon, Martinique-born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer
A currently commonplace but deranged and dangerous eccentricity of mind is illustrative of such perversion of logic:
[1] It is a scientific fact that man-made climate change will result in unthinkable worldwide catastrophe unless immediate dramatic actions are taken to combat it.
[2] But taking such action would constrain business, and I believe in unrestrained capitalism.
[3] Therefore the scientific fact must be wrong.
A DEFINITION: Delusion: (1) Mistaken or misleading opinion, idea, belief, etc. (2) In psychiatry: a belief held in the face of evidence to the contrary that is resistant to all reason
As a psychiatrist, I generally use (2), the psychiatric definition of delusion, but realize that (1) often merges into (2).
“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” - Hippocrates (460-370 BCE)
Hippocrates’s ancient understanding of how quirky and unreliable the human mind can be has endured through the ages but so has the deliberate ignore-ance of it in the minds of the vast majority of humans through the ages, and this ignore-ance has been (and still is) responsible for countless small and large, even catastrophic, human failures and conflicts, the worst especially including such things as religious, racial, and political discrimination and persecution marked by wars, murders, torture, lynchings, slavery, pogroms, inquisitions, and genocide.
“The great majorities of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.” - Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer, often called the founder of modern political science
Laws should be based upon truth, knowledge, and rational understanding of factual reality, not upon “party loyalty,” lies (I of course mean “alternative facts.”), misinformation (alternative facts”), misunderstanding, superstition, myth, emotionalized fuzzy beliefs, and misty ideals.
Many years ago, in my childhood, I was stunned by a brief encounter I had with a younger cousin. Somehow the topic came up in a group of us cousins and siblings of how many teeth an adult human has. I stated that human adults have thirty-two teeth, maximum. She chimed in with the assertion that she had ninety teeth, already, at the age of about six or seven years. I informed her that that was not possible and that she was wrong about that. She insisted that she was right. With that I suggested that she simply count her teeth to prove to herself that she was wrong. She smugly and peevishly with her nose held high refused to count them, obstinately claiming that there was simply no reason to count because she already knew that God had given her ninety teeth and nobody or nothing could ever-ever convince her otherwise. I have no idea how she came by her unshakable conviction that was so unshakably wrong but, once her mind was made up, that was it for her. She had no willingness whatsoever to challenge her clearly mistaken belief. Although the topic never came up again I know that she grew up to be a quite sane and reasonable person, so I assume she eventually realized how wrong she had been about that and perhaps many other matters before she overcame this universal mental dysfunction of the narcissistic immature mind to mistake belief for fact and to defend embarrassing mistakes by stubbornly proclaiming her mistaken beliefs to be true. And not just true, but “God’s truth.”
Young children are universally narcissistic in that way but mostly grow out of it as they learn more about the distinctions between knowing and mere believing. However, I have since encountered a great many grown up individuals, including many who were highly educated (in conventional terms) and in positions of prestige, power, and influence who never outgrew such obstinate reluctance to relinquish easily demonstrably absurd beliefs, to simply admit that they were wrong, or even might be, when their opinions did not stand up in the face of actual fact or any other form of contradictory evidence. In such cases it seems that their defensive obstinacy exposes a deep and powerful narcissistic insecurity akin emotionally to fear of death, resulting from arrested development in childhood, of losing their identity and self-worth if they dare to honestly face reality and admit to not knowing they are absolutely, unquestionably, right in what they only believe to be so. No matter how demonstrably wrong they might be. Appeal to religious belief is a major weapon in the contemporary Republican war on reality.
The same Christian fundamentalists who fulminate most loudly against “sharia law” (medieval Muslim canon law) are perfectly happy to impose their own “Christian sharia” on secular American society. Some of them are willing to deploy violence to that end, making them religious terrorists. But on this issue, there increasingly isn’t much difference between the American Republican Party and the Wahhabi clerics in their Riyadh madrasas. In both cases, religious, theological doctrines are being made the basis of public law, which is un-American and actually unconstitutional (the First Amendment refers to that as Establishment of religion, which it forbids). - Juan Cole, professor of history, University of Michigan
“You can’t confuse me with facts. My mind is made up.” - a bumpersticker slogan
“The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” - another bumpersticker slogan which expresses the same sort of arrested mental development
“GOD HATES FACTS” – a protest sign against religious belief that plays upon the words in signs of the insane group, Westboro Baptist Church, that regularly proclaims “GOD HATES FAGS”
“There’s no point in counting my teeth because I already know I have ninety.” - and another assertion of the same genre, this time by my young cousin but only when she was a young child before she grew up and out of such childish dysfunctional thinking.
Your completely unfounded belief notwithstanding, the simple fact is that we have been providing extremely safe abortion care in Texas since early 1973, and we have done so in the existing (prior to your malfeasant meddling) free-standing abortion clinics, which have been proven to be ideal facilities in every way for this care - ideal for keeping costs down for the women we serve (and therefore not as “lucrative” as Ms. Follis implied in her letter, mindlessly echoing the lies - Oh! Excuse me. I of course meant “alternative facts.” - of so-called ”pro-life” propaganda); ideal for ensuring their confidentiality; ideal for widely and easily available access; ideal for providing a non-hospital-like facility that is conducive to relaxation, comfort, personal support, and less risk of nosocomial infection; and, yes, ideal for safety. By honest and rational assessment, despite perhaps a similar degree of rare exceptions that are inevitable in any other field of human endeavor, abortion provision in Texas has not been “dangerous” and in need of clueless, craven attempts by devious politicians who know and understand next to nothing about it to claim to make it “safer” by extreme restrictions and regulations that would clearly accomplish the opposite of ”safety.” This law requiring, among other nefarious regulations, that all abortion care be provided in ambulatory surgical centers (ASC's) makes no sense at all and has resulted in many clinics being forced to close because of not being able to afford the huge expense of converting to ASC's, and it is crystal clear that closing clinics and thus severely restricting access was the intent, not making abortion care “safer,” despite your “false witness” to the contrary.
Just as deliberately false is the claim that abortion care would be one iota safer if abortion doctors were required to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinic where the abortion was provided. You know (or should know) that that is unequivocally discriminatory because many other physicians, and dentists as well, practice various surgical procedures that carry higher risks in office and clinic settings without hospital admitting privileges or governmental interference because, as is the case with abortion providers, such privileges and regulatory interference are simply not needed and would accomplish nothing but harassment, increased cost, and restriction of access to those procedures. You know (or should know) that most physicians who perform abortions have not had hospital admitting privileges and can't acquire them because of the stigma attached to abortion, a stigma that originates in and is reinforced by people who believe and act as you do. You know (or should know) that this is just another example of your disingenuous “false witness” upon which you base your effort to ban abortion while falsely claiming to be concerned about making abortion care “safer.” You know (or should know) that all of this stubbornly tenacious effort on your part to ban abortion under obviously false pretenses represents a major element of your attempt to inflict your own religious belief on the whole of society. You know (or should know) that such theocratic coercion is anathema to the founding principles of the United States of America. You know (or should know) that it just doesn't get more un-American than that kind of religious bigotry becoming law. King George III must be laughing in his grave that those of your ilk are allowed within 30 miles of a site of government where laws are made. Laws should be based upon truth, knowledge, and rational understanding of factual reality, not upon “party loyalty,” willful ignorance, lies (i.e., “alternative facts”), superstition, myth, emotionalized fuzzy beliefs (especially those unsupported or even contradicted by facts), and misguided misty ideals.
In regards to medication abortion, there is no way I can even imagine that it would be a bit “safer” to require a woman, who has already been required to devote two days to the state-mandated counseling with its state-mandated lies (Oh! Please excuse me yet again!. I am incorrigible. I meant “alternative facts.”), state-mandated ultrasound, and state-mandated 24 hour waiting period, to return to a clinic on the day after she was there to take her first pill (mifepristone) to have the physician hand the second round of pills (misoprostol) to her in person. All this would accomplish is necessitating extra time off work and away from her responsibilities at home, as well as travel and lodging expenses that would price it beyond the means of many women, especially those in the far reaches of west Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, and even Mexico, and vastly more so after this terrible law has forced the closing of many clinics that weren’t financially able to make the extremely expensive conversion to ASC's or to find experienced abortion doctors with hospital admitting privileges as the law nefariously mandates.
We well knew from tragic past experience what would happen. Women of means would fly to other states or around the world to get safe abortions in locales less backward than Republican-dominated Texas while droves of women of inadequate means would resort to very dangerous incompetent illegal abortions, attempts at self-abortion (those symbolized by the iconic coat hangers, caustic chemicals, and back alleys of the horrific times prior to Roe vs. Wade), or even suicide. Just as in the times prior to Roe vs. Wade a great many of these women and teenage girls would be seriously injured. Many would die in excruciating pain and suffering, both physical and emotional. Please explain how that would be “pro-life,” Dr. Campbell. And please spare me the habitual dodge of just saying you don't “believe” it would happen. Law should be based upon solid facts, not upon “party loyalty,” and not upon your personal superstition, myth, fuzzy beliefs, and misguided misty ideals, and that goes for your medical practice as well. I can only hope that you base your own medical interventions upon solid, peer-reviewed, scientifically verified facts whenever possible. If not, perhaps you should be legally prohibited, even physically restrained if necessary, from getting close to a medical facility (say, within 30 miles of one).
The nature of fetal existence deep inside the body of a woman or teenage girl is a profoundly unique and unparalleled situation in which the religious or political beliefs of others should have no right to intrude unless invited by the woman or girl herself. Her body should be under her jurisdiction and that of no one else. It should be her call. Not mine. Not yours. Not that of restrictive law. Not that of the Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical Christians, or of any other religious belief system. Not that of über-“Godly,” ignorant bigot, ex-Governor and Panderer-in-Chief Rick “Oops” Perry (now über-“Godly,” ignorant bigot, Governor and Panderer-in-Chief Greg Abbott) of Texas. And not that of the current, willfully-and-tenaciously-ignorant-beyond-the-point-where-lunacy-begins (and I mean that quite literally) Republican Party. Government should not have the power to force a virtual lockdown of any woman’s reproductive system, especially under such transparent false pretense and shameless lies. (Oh my! There I go again. I’m hopeless! I of course meant “alternative facts,” not lies.)
There is perhaps no area of human behavior in which clear rational thought and understanding of factual reality is more obscured by obstinate prejudice and intransigent, willful ignorance supported only by emotionally charged irrational belief and misinformed and uninformed opinion and in which the consequences of this failure to face and accept truth, reason, and understanding are more catastrophically and mercilessly cruel than in matters concerning sexuality and reproduction, even among many physicians and other supposedly highly educated people who have had every opportunity to learn and know better. You know, like you, Senator/Doctor Campbell.
In actual fact, we have been quite safely providing abortion care in Texas and throughout the country for over forty years. Tragically, each time the Republican-dominated state government (beholden to extreme pseudo-religious bigotry and a reckless, cruel, ignorant, and ill-considered political agenda, indiscriminately gorged at the trough of blatantly dishonest “alternative facts”) has stuck its dripping snout into safe legal abortion care in Texas, safe legal abortion care has overall become incrementally less accessible and therefore less safe and was virtually wiped out for almost three years by this latest atrocity, HB2, that was forced upon us by irrational, unreasonable, and profoundly dishonest and closed-minded religious bigotry and partisan ideology. Our traditional Hippocratic Oath, as you know (or should know), begins with “First, do no harm.” However, as you seem intransigently undisposed (or unable) to know and understand (or truthfully admit), this anti-abortion law that you ignorantly and/or dishonestly championed was set to rain down a whoppin' big amount of severe harm on a whoppin' big number of women and teenage girls, and that is exactly what has resulted. We told you so. You (figuratively) just stuck your fingers in your ears, shut your eyes, and yodeled. Your “solution” looking for a nonexistent “problem” has created terrible real problems that could be solved or, hopefully prevented, only by this outrageous law being struck down or repealed. For your future reference I have some advice for you: If it ain't broke don't “fix” it. Tragically, your mantra seems to be “If it ain’t broke ‘fix’ it until it is,” which is exactly what was accomplished by HB2.
Just beneath the self-righteous, sanctimonious rhetoric of the so-called “Pro-life” movement lurks the ages-old, traditional interpersonal politics of male supremacy, male chauvinism, and male domination of women in patriarchal society. Their bumpersticker-ready slogan might as well, and much more honestly, be an old familiar satirical motto of male domination, like “Keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant and chained to the cook stove.” The iconic cartoon image comes to mind of a “caveman” dragging to his cave by her hair an unconscious “cavewoman” with a big knot on her head whom he has just knocked unconscious with a huge wood club he holds in his other hand. That club-wielding “caveman” reminds me of the Tea Party and extreme right-wing pseudo-militia yahoos I see on TV proudly swaggering around in public with their penises (Oops! My Freudian background ambushed me - I mean AR15’s and AK47’s) slung menacingly over their shoulders and Glock 45’s or 9mm’s or their equivalents holstered at their waists.
Regarding abortion rights, in the service of accomplishing their goals of control over women and women’s self-determination and punishing women for their sexuality, so-called “pro-lifers” freely engage in literally any tactic they think might work, from flagrantly lying about the nature of the developing fetus and of abortion care to arson and bombing of abortion clinics and the deliberate, premeditated, cold-blooded murder of physicians and clinic workers in and around abortion facilities. Examples abound of the many crazed lies (oh,me! Again! I of course meant “alternative facts”) and distortions they employ. One of their favorites is the completely false allegation that the “abortion industry” rakes in “huge profits” from the sale of fetal tissue to cosmetic firms for use in their products and to medical researchers. I have been closely involved within the so-called “abortion industry” for over 30 years and know that no such market for fetal tissue exists, nor has ever existed.
Other examples are the church-sponsored so-called “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” or “CPC’s,” fake clinics of medical fraud of which there are multitudes around the country, and of which Ms. Follis assured me in her naive letter that you were a “dedicated supporter of the growing number.” They typically seduce women seeking abortion care into entering their dens of lies (I’m incorrigible! I meant “alternative facts.”), condemnation, histrionic exaggeration, shame, guilt, and misrepresentation by fraudulently posing as abortion clinics and offering free sonograms and pregnancy tests. It’s like, “‘Come into my parlor,’ said the spider to the fly.” Once lured into one of these fake clinics a woman is subjected to a barrage of sanctimonious so-called “pro-life” lies (Oops! There I go again! I of course meant “alternative facts.”), often even secluded in a room to watch wildly misleading, fear and guilt inducing anti-abortion videos. I have seen many women and teenage girls who came to my clinic after being traumatized by having been subjected to the cruel abuse in CPC’s at so desperate and vulnerable a time in their lives. For example, there is a CPC in east Texas where a certain “counselor” has been especially creative with her ”alternative facts,” repeatedly telling women seeking abortion care that (paraphrasing from what I was told by numerous women who were conned into accepting such “counseling”) “the doctor will stick a ‘whirling knife’ into you to cut up the ‘baby,’ and the knife is likely to seriously damage your uterus, ovaries, and other internal organs, and you will never be able to have a baby, even if you survive.” Nope. Not so! (No knives in an abortion clinic except kitchen and table knives in the break room for use in snacks and lunch, most often used to spread peanut butter, and maybe jelly or jam, on bread, bagels, or crackers.) And on and on they go. They just make this nasty, crazy stuff up. These so-called “pro-life” extreme Christians don’t seem to be bothered by their routinely and flagrantly breaking the biblical commandment against bearing “false witness,” although it is one of their “Big Ten.”
As you must know, such CPC’s in Texas under the backward, Republican dominated government have been funded by the state in the last several years. The money for state funding of these sorry dens of corruption and medical fraud was taken from the family planning budget. Originally it was $5,000,000 over two years, but then increased to over $8,000,000 (last I heard). As a result many (over a hundred as I recall) legitimate family planning clinics, whether they provided abortions or not, have been forced to close, leaving thousands of Texas women without access to medical care.
The twisted misrepresentations, exaggerations, distortions of truth, and deliberate lies (Damn! I just can’t break myself of it! Of course I meant “alternative facts”) so-called “pro-life” zealots purvey in their obsessive attempts to scare and shame women out of having abortions, as well as to demonize reproductive freedom and abortion providers in the minds of the public and, especially, in the minds of dim-witted, shallow, ignorant, and uncaring lawmakers, even some who are medical doctors who have no excuse for not knowing better (such as you), in state and federal government, are much too numerous for me to include here, but here are a few examples:
“God hates abortion.” “Abortion is banned in the Bible.” "Abortion causes breast cancer." "Abortion is psychologically damaging to women." "Abortion causes infertility." "Most women regret having an abortion." "Once a woman sees an image of the fetus from an ultrasound, she won't want to have an abortion." "Abortion endangers women's health and lives." "TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws are really about making abortion safer for women." “Abortion is painful to a fetus.” “Doctors provide abortions just for the money.”
Every one of the above statements is false but typical of the blatant lies (Ouch! Yet again! I mean “alternative facts!) told by so-called “pro-life” zealots to women and teenage girls seeking abortion care. The danger to women's health and lives isn't safe, legal, accessible abortion. The danger comes from those who are trying to outlaw it or prevent access to it. Like you. Abortion did not start with Roe v. Wade. Safe abortion did. As we have been trying to remind the public for many years, many women and teenage girls have always had abortions, or attempted to, and always will, regardless of considerations of legality or of safety or of someone else’s sanctimonious moral condemnation. Restricting or outlawing abortion never has and never will “stop” abortion. It will not “make abortion a thing of the past in Texas,” as Texas über-Godly former Governor Rick “Oops” Perry in his trademark abysmal ignorance of his own abysmal ignorance and bigotry, callous indifference, and hypocritical pandering so foolishly proclaimed. Prohibition of abortion has never prevented abortion; it has only made abortion dangerous and often deadly for women and teenage girls. The political and legal - and moral – choice before us is not between abortion and no abortion. It is between very safe legal abortion and very dangerous illegal abortion.
Which would you choose?
By the way, I noticed that Ms. Follis, in her letter to me, apparently just had to mention that abortion provision is “lucrative.” Well, any medical practice is lucrative or at least has that potential. But I feel sure her inclusion of that word, “lucrative,” was just her awkward attempt to sneak in that old so-called “pro-life” myth that abortion providers are “just in it for the money.” Well, I suppose she actually believes that, but in actual fact, the money is not all that great when compared to other surgical subspecialties.
These lies, myths, distortions, and bizarre fantasies are disseminated by millions of pamphlets and brochures, in newspapers and magazines, on a multitude of sites on the internet, on film and video, in TV ads, in mass mailings, personally by misguided and misinformed protesters at abortion clinics, and elsewhere and otherwise in a flood of misinformation so massive and pervasive that it is virtually impossible to counter effectively with truth, especially since it is just the nature of the mind-abducted human to believe what one wants to believe, however unfounded, irrational, and grotesque, or feels a strong emotional need to believe, and to cling tenaciously to such beliefs despite clear demonstration of their lack of foundation in known fact or even of their proven falsehood (reminding one of the old truism (attributed to Mark Twain) that “a lie makes it several times around the world before truth gets its boots on”).
Abortion is portrayed as “murder.” It is also misrepresented as being “dangerous” to the women who undergo it, as commonly causing infertility, depression, breast cancer, and a host of other serious health problems, even death. None of this is true. None of it. The vast majority of the perpetrators who spread all this flagrantly false information are of the Christian faith, and in so doing they are blatantly disobeying one of their basic “Ten Commandments,” the one prohibiting the bearing of “false witness.” Strangely and sadly, this commandment does not seem to slow them down a bit. In fairness, I must point out that not all purveyors of this flagrant misinformation know any better. Many of them are well-meaning and sincere, but possess neither the factual knowledge, the experience, nor the understanding of the need for safe, legal abortion care to counter what they have been told by pious charlatans they mistakenly regard as authorities and in a great many cases frightened, indoctrinated, and virtually brainwashed into uncritically believing – like that ubiquitous first blow for authoritarian oppression for most, “You will burn in hell for eternity unless you believe and do what I tell you!” Terrorism works, and I’d be hard-put to imagine a more abusive terroristic threat with which to damage and pervert the developing minds of young children and ensure lives of emotional pain, suffering, and failure than that one. The religious extremists who abuse children in this manner are generally convinced that they are doing the children a huge favor, because they have themselves been deceived and caught up in this zealous emotionalism and honestly believe they are doing good and that the lies (“alternative facts”) and distortions, even the more fantastic and ridiculous examples, actually represent “God’s truth.”
However, the problem with the vast majority of these representatives of the so-called “pro-life” movement who are well-meaning and sincere is not just that they are misinformed and that they misinform others, but that they are so emotionally invested in the misguided cause of opposing abortion rights and inflicting their religious beliefs onto others and onto all of society that they are impervious to either the reason or the simple acknowledgement of simple fact that would correct their misconceptions. They are thus not only closed-minded and misinformed and therefore uneducated, but also obstinately uneducable. Their minds have been abducted by means of terroristic threat. I have no doubt that polls that show decreasing support for legal abortion are due to the massive, flagrantly dishonest propagandizing of the American public. When one believes one knows it all and is absolutely right, one is not open to learning. As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” No matter how strongly one believes that one knows what one merely believes that one knows one merely believes it and might well be wrong, but I know of no greater exercise in futility than attempting to get so intransigent an individual to acknowledge that simple and obvious truth. Their minds have been abducted - shackled to unfounded belief - and their capacity for critical thinking is thus no longer available to them. Their response to being presented with anything they don’t want to believe (or are fearful of believing) is closely akin to shutting their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears, and yodeling.
Senator/Doctor Campbell, my prescription for you is to take your fingers out of your ears and listen, open your eyes and see, and think before you speak or act. I guess you believe that “God” inserted that brain into your head. The majority of abortion providers and supporters of the right of women and teenage girls to safe, legal abortion self-identify as Christian or Jewish, just not your particular brand of either. Some as other religious persuasions. Some as agnostic. Some as atheists. I guess that the proportionalities of the various persuasions mirror those of the general population. I am an atheist, a naturalist (as opposed to a “super”naturalist), and a secular humanist, so not one to give you religious advice. However, if you want to remain true to your beliefs, it seems to me that you must believe that “God” slipped that brain into your head for you to use it. I urge you to remove the shackles and do so, “God” or no “God.”
Again:
“Some 47,000 women per year are estimated to lose their lives from the complications of unsafe abortion, almost all of which could have been prevented through better access to sexuality education, fertility awareness, contraception, and especially safe abortion services. - World Health Organization(WHO), 2008
And many times that number are seriously injured and maimed. Doesn’t that estimate by the World Health Organization merit attention and serious consideration and compassion? Shouldn’t it? Or do you just not give a damn about the lives, health, and well-being of all those women and teenage girls? WHO has estimated that about 47,000 women and teenage girls in those countries where abortion care is illegal die every year from injuries and infections caused by often well-intentioned but untrained, ill-equipped, and inexperienced outlawed abortionists or by attempts to self-abort. Many more are seriously injured and maimed for life. Do you really want women and teenage girls in the United States to be coerced by misguided law into contributing to those tragic numbers? Can forcing women to resort to such callous death-dealing barbarism sanely be called “pro-life?” No! Is it reminiscent of the Holy Inquisition of the historic Roman Catholic Church? Yes! Of other brands of extreme religious barbarism known as the Taliban, ISIL (aka ISIS or DAESH), or al Qaeda? Yes! How about the American “Christian Taliban” of which you and your ilk are perversely proud disciples? Yes!
You and your ilk apparently slept through civics class. One of the foundational and defining principles of our constitution is that human rights are not to be dependent upon the vagaries of majority opinion but protected from them. It’s interchangeably known as “freedom” or “liberty.” I believe you must have heard of it.
Women and teenage girls should be allowed to exercise their human right to the freedom to pursue their own hopes, dreams, and ambitions, and thus their lives, without being forced to risk losing all that they are and desire to become, including their economic survival, their education, their children, and their lives, by laws that require them to comply with the dictates of the extreme religious beliefs and ideologies of others. Women with unwanted pregnancies have always done whatever it takes to obtain abortions, whatever the risks, and they always will. The blood-drenched past of prohibition of abortion in the United States should have taught us all that the damage to the lives, health, and well-being of conscious women and teenage girls and their families is much too high a price to pay for restricting or criminalizing abortion in a futle attempt to save the lives of insentient zygotes, embryos, and fetuses deep inside the bodily domains of desperately unwilling hosts who will again in great numbers obtain dangerous illegal abortions if safe legal abortions are restricted or prohibited by law. All will suffer. Many will die. Many will be seriously injured and maimed for life. All will be subjected to terrible pain and anguish. This is not guesswork. We know this from the experience in this nation prior to Roe vs. Wade, as well as from the terrible tragedies of tens of thousands of women and teenage girls who now suffer and die each year from incompetent criminal abortions in those backward countries in which abortion is still illegal. Think about that. We’ve been there, done that. Hundreds of thousands of American women and teenage girls died or were seriously injured as the result. It was horrific. Oh, I know that so-called “pro-lifers” deny that ever happened. That’s one of their favorite “alternative facts.” However, I was there dealing with it in the ER and maternity wards of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas as it was happening, so antiabortion “alternative facts” don’t sway me. The vast majority of physicians of that era pre-Roe vs. Wade were pro-choice because they had experienced the horrors of being outlawed.
“Those who cannot (or will not I add) remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - George Santayana, 20th century philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist
To go back is unconscionable. But the pious, so-called “pro-lifers” and the Republican Party have that as their “righteous” goal. It is just insane (I don’t use that word lightly), but it is not a fixed, organic condition of insanity, but more like an addiction to wishful thinking and belief in magic for consolation and comfort. Extreme religion stops a thinking brain. It can be remedied by the application of education, critical thinking, and reason, along with a dose of understanding combined with compassion. However, as is the case with recovery from drug addiction, rehabilitation can be torturous. There is no quick fix, and it is not an easy process to go through. Much more in my book about that and about why I am not a believer in “God.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates, the “father of western philosophy,” 470 – 399 BCE: spoke rationality to entrenched power in classical Athens and was forced to drink deadly poisonous hemlock for so doing.
If you are unwilling to submit to such self-examination you really should give serious consideration to my suggestion that you stay at least 30 miles away from Austin. (Of course, with state government in Austin infested as it is by mind-abducted Republicans, this advice of mine does not single you out. I feel sure you fit in smoothly with that sorry pack of nefarious, ignorant fools. I eagerly anticipate the day when this infestation by ignorance, smug arrogance, irresponsibility, and corruption will be driven from Austin by the electoral process. It is long overdue.) But it will likely take years to repair the damage already done by those invidious fools (like you).
To repeat the question to myself that I posed in the beginning of this letter: Should I laugh or cry? I won’t laugh. I feel sad for you, because I do believe that you are a caring person who sincerely desires to take part in improving the well-being of people. But you are in my opinion tragically misled and way off course – and perversely proud of it. I cry for you and the entire state, the nation, and the world.
“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher
Sincerely* yours,
WILLIAM WEST, MD
*(Though definitely not respectfully. Respect has to be earned and deserved, although even a fool can attract respect (and votes) from other fools. I’m no fool. You couldn’t earn my respect regardless of how many fools you can fool into voting for you from the huge Republican pool of pig-ignorant, sanctimonious, callous charlatans, un-American theocratic fascists, gullible know-nothings (some of whom are certifiably mentally ill), other types of un-knowing, un-caring, and un-thinking fools and fact-dodgers (i.e., delusionally believing what they want to believe, instead of having the logical and reasonable reasons that facts embody – like the host of mind-abducted and/or nefarious, irresponsible Republicans, including you. And like all of the other delusional deniers of reality like the horrific, scientifically absolutely proven and rapidly escalating catastrophe of worldwide human-made climate change. Et cetera ad nauseam.)
P.S. To learn more read my book. (Sigh – fat chance I guess - you’d have to open your eyes and your mind (which is likely fossilized into rock hardness by now and a candidate for a museum of geological curiosities) take your fingers out of your ears, and quit yodeling - but maybe worth a try?) Does it scare you? Or what?
