Didn't "Thou shalt not commit false witness" used to be one of the BIG 10?
Have you heard of the recent "massive and intensive undercover investigation” of abortion providers in Texas by "Operation Rescue?" A great many people have. It's been quite a buzz on "pro-life" websites in recent months. They believe they have scored a great victory over the rights of women and teenage girls to obtain abortion care in this nation. Sadly, tragically, they probably have - by means of their trademark resort to flagrant dishonesty and inflammatory language - and because of their timing of the announcement of their specious, so-called "massive and intensive undercover investigation” of abortion providers in Texas to create a surge of anti-abortion sentiment to coincide with the session of the Texas State Legislature, ongoing at the time, in which still more mindless and medically damaging restrictions were hammered down upon women seeking abortion care and abortion care providers in Texas.
For more of what I think about TRAP (Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers) laws and abortion rights generally see my previous diary.
First and foremost, consider the source of the complaint against abortion care providers in Texas. This is the organization known as Operation Rescue (OR) that claims to have conducted a “massive and intensive undercover investigation” of abortion providers in Texas. This organization is well known to be an intrusive and aggressive (and fanatical and floridly dishonest) advocate and propaganda mill for the abolition of any and all rights of women and teenage girls to obtain legal and safe terminations of unwanted pregnancies, regardless of any woman’s or girl’s personal and private reasons for choosing termination, including even to save her own life and/or health and well-being. Their methods have consistently been extreme and ruthless and have shown little or no respect for truth, understanding, fairness, or compromise in their attempts to advance their perverse “cause,” and it is my opinion that their recent “massive and intensive undercover investigation,” apparently timed to create a surge of anti-abortion sentiment to coincide with the then ongoing session of the Texas State Legislature, is but one more example of this.
While I cannot possibly be absolutely sure that there have been absolutely no incidents of careless comments made by any clinic personnel or even myself (can any physician anywhere?), I do feel confident that any such comments have been rare and that they certainly do not reflect clinic policy or either nefarious intent, reckless disregard, or incompetence, as OR alleged. By and large, the personnel in Whole Woman’s Health facilities are very well-trained, highly motivated, conscientious, and ethical in their job performance (as I am myself, I must add), and they have rightly gained my trust in the approximately three years that I have been associated with WWH.
OR’s allegation (deceptively illustrated on the OR website by a secretly recorded “ambush” of a private conference call) that I (revelation: I am Dr. William West) failed to comply with state law in my conduct of a conference call. First, please be aware that this recording was heavily edited to conform to OR’s intentions to defame, as well as falsely heralded as “evidence” of a “shocking” and “massive” illegal conspiracy “of "epidemic proportions” and/or display of “alarming” incompetence and criminal intent. In response to my FAX below, You Tube removed the video containing the audio recording and other specious OR allegations as violating their standards of conduct, which also resulted in its deletion from the OR website.
FAX to You Tube:
To You Tube, Fax: +1 650-253-0001
The video at this site
( http://www.youtube.com/... )
titled “Widespread TX Abortion Abuses Exposed,” is composed of POSSIBLY a grain of truth, but is at least highly questionable and contains EXTREMELY defamatory and unverified assertions, heavily edited audios, and unfounded insinuations that have the strong potential of inciting EXTREME violence against doctors and women’s clinics. It was uploaded to You Tube by a woman named Cheryl Sullenger. Sullenger and her husband, Randall, both pled guilty in 1988 to conspiring to destroy the Alavarado Medical Center women’s clinic with a gasoline bomb. She served two years in prison. In 2009, she drew attention following the trial of Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist convicted of the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Sullenger initially denied any contact with Roeder, but when her phone number was discovered on the dashboard of his car, she subsequently stated that she had kept him informed regarding Dr. Tiller’s whereabouts, and there remains a veil of suspicion that she might have been directly involved in inspiring and assisting Roeder to stalk, then assassinate, Dr. Tiller.
Sullenger deleted all comments and closed the video to further comments minutes after I posted the following short comment:
“OR is known for its fanatical opposition to legal abortion and its dishonest exaggeration of risks to women of professional abortion care, as well as its terrorism against abortion providers and their patients. This video and “investigation” are unconvincing. The following is a representation of what OR strives to bring BACK to this nation:
The World Health Organization has estimated that in those parts of the world where abortion is illegal, more than 70,000 desperate women and teenage girls DIE every year from illegal abortions.”
I urge that this video be taken down.
William West, MD
OR then reposted the video through another online video venue, Vimeo. By email I then convinced that service, too, to remove the OR video. OR then turned to a video service they could control, "Pro-lifetube," so I gave up.
I don’t pretend to like the Texas state law euphemized as “The Woman’s Right to Know Act.” For a number of reasons that are both evidence-based and cogent, I regard that law as misguided and harmful to many women and teenage girls, as well as completely lacking in medical merit. However, I would never mistake my distaste for, or disagreement with, any particular law relating to the practice of medicine as license to violate it. If you are familiar with that law you must realize that, among other inappropriate and invasive mandates within it, it requires physicians to mislead women seeking abortions – to lie to them and thus magnify stress and anxiety that can be lifelong – by stating that having an abortion “possibly” increases a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer later in life. This despite the complete lack of evidence that such is the case, as well as serious, peer-reviewed studies that refute such a connection between abortion and breast cancer.
How can I ethically speak a state-mandated lie to patients without uttering in the same breath a rational, evidence-based and medically sound refutation of it? However, true to their form, this ethical truthfulness on my part is defamed by OR as deliberate and nefarious untruth designed to deceive and exploit women. I consistently do both – I speak the state-mandated lie and the truth as we currently know it to be. As I remember, we were advised by the (then) Texas Department of Health (now Department of State Health Services) when this law went into effect that this approach to informed consent was acceptable. In my opinion it is not only ethically and morally acceptable, but absolutely essential to ethics and morality, which I do not take lightly.
The law states:
Sec. 171.012. VOLUNTARY AND INFORMED CONSENT.
(A) Except in the case of a medical emergency, consent to an abortion is voluntary and informed only if:
(I) the physician who is to perform the abortion or the referring physician informs the woman on whom the abortion is to be performed of:
(a) the name of the physician who will perform the abortion;
(b) the particular medical risks associated with the particular abortion procedure to be employed, including, when medically accurate(emphasis mine):
(i) the risks of infection and hemorrhage;
(ii) the potential danger to a subsequent pregnancy and of infertility; and
(iii) the possibility of increased risk of breast cancer following an induced abortion and the natural protective effect of a completed pregnancy in avoiding breast cancer;
(c) the probable gestational age of the unborn child at the time the abortion is to be performed...
This appears on the OR website:
During one conference call recorded on January 10, 2011, abortionist William West of Whole Women’s Health can be heard mocking the information he is required by law to tell women. After he says that he is required to say that abortion presents a risk for breast cancer he launches into a mocking rebuttal of the information he just told them:
“The anti-abortion folks have waged this fear campaign for years now, um, making numerous false charges about the quote dangers of abortion, and uh, one completely fictitious (sic) this is drummed up spread all around is that there is an increased risk of breast cancer and interference with future childbearing and so forth. None of these are true. It’s their attempt to scare you out of having an abortion.”
“If this does not violate the letter of the law, it certainly undermines the intent of the legislature, which determined that women should have certain information on which to make an informed decision,” said Newman (Director of OR and its so-called “intensive investigation”). “It is his remarks that are grossly untrue, and he should be held accountable for misleading women about abortion risks.”
The truth I always speak that OR edited out:
“The state of Texas requires me to tell you that there is a “possibility’ of increased risk of breast cancer following an abortion. However, prominent medical experts such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the World Health Organization, the National Cancer Institute, and the American Cancer Society all argue against this theory. The National Cancer Institute, after reviewing the scientific evidence from many studies from throughout the world, has concluded that “induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.” The false notion that there is an increased risk of breast cancer after abortion is pure fiction spread around by those against abortion to scare women out of having abortions, demonize abortion care providers, and turn the public against aborton.”
Furthermore, the law clearly states that the physician must inform a woman of any of the mentioned information only "when medically accurate." Since there is no evidence that the claimed link between abortion and increased breast cancer risk is at all "medically accurate," I was actually in over-compliance with the law to even mention breast cancer.
Regarding the charge that WWH “staff coach boyfriends and pregnant girls to evade: parental consent, the 24 hour waiting period, and/or child sex abuse (statutory rape) reporting laws,” I know of no instance in which there really was failure to inform authorities of any minor girl impregnated by an older man, and it certainly is our policy to report any such situation to the appropriate authorities. Although there is no way that I can vouch for all clinics in Texas and realize that are some less-than-ethical practitioners in all fields of medicine and in every state, I feel confident that (most? all?) other clinics in Texas also take such situations as seriously as do we who are associated with WWH.
Regarding the specific allegation that I “did not report the statutory rape of a 13 year old patient by a 24 year old man, just told the minor she could tell her mom,” all I can do is honestly deny that. Although that is something I would never do, there is no way that I can prove that I both would not and did not. Nor can I prove that some employee might not have made a careless remark of that nature. However, my confidence in every WWH employee whom I know is high enough for me to profoundly doubt that. It is a well-established and known fact of logic that a negative cannot be proven – thus the impossibility of my being able to prove I did not, or that any WWH employee did not. It is of logical necessity the responsibility of OR to prove their allegation that anyone did. They have offered no such proof.
Nor do WWH administration or personnel intentionally or by policy participate in evasions of the requirements of parental consent or the 24 hour waiting period. What they do is grudgingly but consistently enforce the 24 hour waiting period and simply inform minor girls of their legal right to petition a judge for a judicial bypass in lieu of getting parental consent if they feel they cannot inform their parents.
This appears on the OR website:
Caller: Hello?
West: Yes.
Caller: My appointment is tomorrow morning and if I called now, is this enough time? It’s less than 24 hours.
West: Yes.
Caller: And that’ll be okay?
West: Um-hm.
Caller: Thank you.
What OR left out, intentionally with their typical dishonesty or out of the huge degree of ignorance created and sustained by their devotion to ignoring and denying fact and believing only what they want to believe:
The requirement is for a 24 hour waiting period before the abortion procedure, not before the appointment time. The conference calls are made at 10:30 AM. Although the appointment time might be 8:30 or 9:00 AM, the abortion procedure will not take place until after all the paperwork, counseling, lab work, ultrasound measurement, and individual counseling are completed, which is rarely before noon. And never before 10:30 AM.
According to OR’s own confession, some of their “investigators” gained entrance to clinics under false pretenses and even took photographs inside the clinic in McAllen. They also displayed a photo of the parking area of the clinic, describing it as “in a gross state of disrepair.” What the photo of the “gross state of disrepair” actually demonstrated was an ongoing resurfacing of the parking area that was extensive and, now complete, represents a major improvement to the clinic. Likewise, the entire interior of the clinic was undergoing remodeling and improvements during the time of the OR “investigation,” and during that time the clinic, while sometimes not up to par in appearance, posed no compromise of sanitary conditions and no risk to our patients.
Assuming that the empty medication vials displayed by OR and described as “partially full” (actually, some might have contained a drop or two, and only OR knows what they might have added) and that empty urine specimen containers actually were recovered from a public dumpster somewhere, the claim of OR that they presented a “public health hazard” is absurd and follows the long observed OR methodology of sensationalizing complete fabrications and molehills into mountains to inflame and incite a gullible and ill-informed segment of the public. Furthermore, the urine specimen containers in the OR photos are not of the kind the WWH clinic in McAllen uses but are or the type used by the doctor's office next door to the clinic - a doctor who is anti-abortion!
Regarding the photos of bloody instruments of abortion claimed by OR to have been recovered from a public dumpster, well, who but OR knows where and when those photos were taken, where those objects came from, or even of what they actually consisted? Knowing WWH as I do, I find it impossible to believe that employees of any WWH facility would so recklessly dispose of such contaminated medical waste, and can only believe that this is just another chapter in OR’s long history of engaging in false witness to defame legal abortion and its providers before lawmakers and the general public.
Nor do I find credible the OR allegations that WWH violated HIPAA regulations. Although I can’t know for sure, I find it much easier to believe that blank forms were taken from the clinic by one or more of the women OR sent into the clinic under false pretenses (i.e., posing as patients) and copied and “doctored” to suit their purposes.
On OR’s website is the unfounded allegation that I have a “record of abuse.” I don’t know what this “record” could be. I strenuously deny the allegations drawn by OR from their so-called “intensive investigation,” and in almost 50 years of medical practice I've never been sued except for one instance in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1990 which was a meritless case filed by an anti-abortion lawyer who was also an anti-abortion activist for obvious political reasons. It concerned a complaint by a woman that my abortion on her had rendered her unable to get pregnant or bear a child. As I remember, the initial filing demanded $8,000,000 in damages. The wind was knocked out of that case when this poor, "infertile" woman became pregnant and had a baby while the case was still in the discovery phase.
Regarding OR’s strange objection to assistance provided through the National Abortion Federation (NAF) in funding for women to obtain abortions, just how is this compassionate, humanitarian help wrong? Someone said that a woman doesn’t want an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone or a new car; she wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to chew off its own leg to escape. I recently performed an early first trimester abortion on a 21 (not a typo) year old woman who already had six (not a typo) children. I have rarely seen more desperation and weariness in anyone’s eyes – nor such relief in her eyes that she was spared from going through another pregnancy and having another child to care for with her meager resources.
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 highly educated people who have had every opportunity to know better.
I would stand corrected if OR were able to substantiate any of the charges they made in such bombastic and ostentatious manner. I feel confident that they cannot, but they likely got what they wanted: increased support for other medically and ethically pointless and ill-advised regulatory laws being currently considered in the state legislature aimed at making abortion care more stressful and less accessible in Texas, especially to economically and socially disadvantaged women and teenage girls, to the detriment of the health and well-being, and even to the lives, of these women and teenage girls.
In closing, I want to assure you that, although we feel sure we have been spuriously defamed by OR’s so-called “intensive investigation,” we have taken OR’s charges quite seriously and carefully reviewed our policies and procedures with strong intent to make any corrections that might seem necessary.
Thus far we have found none.