¡La cordura sí! ¡Los Republicanos no!
“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
The bulk of the sanctimonious American Republican Party specializes in dishonestly or ignorantly purveying falsely comforting and frightening myths to seduce gullible voters into supporting it. Such as extreme (and generally quite hypocritical) Christianity All religions are built upon emotionalized myth and superstition believed by the gullible on the basis only of “faith” in imaginary supernatural influence. “Faith” is nothing but belief without real evidence, as well as contradicted by real evidence – by reality. Laws should never be based upon myth or superstition, that is, upon religion of any kind. Laws should be based upon truth, knowledge, and rational understanding of factual reality, not upon “party loyalty,” willful ignorance, lies, superstition, myth, emotionalized fuzzy beliefs, and misty ideals. If your reaction to this simple statement of obvious reality is like the outrage and despair of a small child upon being told there is no Santa Claus (or Easter Bunny, or Tooth Fairy) I suggest this book and its references as a start:
“Pro-Life” is Pro-LIE; They Don’t Care That Women Suffer and DIE
by a veteran, Dr. William West (aka Beket) of an exemplary medical practice in Texas of 47 years as a psychiatrist, child psychiatrist, OB/GYN, and abortion doctor in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Beaumont, and McAllen and of the 2013 orange brigade's march on the state capitol:
https://www.amazon.com/Pro-Life-Pro-LIE-They-dont-women-ebook/dp/B00LL23LKW?ie=UTF8&ref_=cm_cr_arp_d_pl_foot_top
With current legal counterattacks from Texas and around the nation it is heartening to see that after all these years of hunching quivering in our “foxholes,” rolling with the punches and getting knocked down at every turn there are at last apparently strong efforts with high national profile afoot to effectively (fingers crossed) counterattack and expose these lying sanctimonious bigots for what they are.
To update James Carville's 1992 reminder to the Bill Clinton campaign, "It's the economy, stupid!" I suggest "It's the lying sanctimonious theocrats, stupid!"
Less than a year after being outlawed by the theocratic bigots in control of Texas state government (HB2) I lost my medical license due to a Texas Medical Board hearing that resembled a medieval star chamber or “holy” inquisition, led by a devout Roman Catholic so-called "pro-life" doctor with political ambitions (ran for mayor and lost), Dr. John Guerra of McAllen, Texas.
This book is my swan's song.
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 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 a 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 caveman carrying his club reminds me of the Tea Party and extreme right-wing militia yahoos I see on TV proudly swaggering around in public with their penises (Oops! My Freudian background ambushed me - I meant AR15’s and AK47’s) slung menacingly over their shoulders and Glock 45’s or 9mm’s 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 abortion care to arson and bombing of abortion clinics and the deliberate, premeditated, cold-blooded murder of physicians and clinic workers in and around clinics and even at home as in the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian and in church as with Dr. George Tiller.
Examples abound of the many crazed lies and distortions they employ. One of their favorites is the completely false allegation that the “abortion industry” rakes in millions of dollars from the sale of fetal tissue for medical research and even to cosmetic firms for use in their products. 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. 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. They typically seduce women seeking abortion care into entering their dens of lies, condemnation, histrionic exaggeration, and misrepresentation by 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” propaganda, likely 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 callously being traumatized by having been subjected to the cruel abuse in CPC’s at so desperate and vulnerable times in their lives. There is a CPC in east Texas where a “counselor” has told women seeking abortion care (paraphrasing from what I was told by numerous women who were conned into accepting such “counseling”) that “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 on bread or crackers. And on and on they go. They just make this crazy stuff up. These so-called “pro-life” fundamentalist Christians don’t seem to be bothered by their routinely and flagrantly breaking the biblical commandment against bearing false witness, one of their “Big Ten.”
Believe it or not, CPC’s in Texas under the 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 has now been increased to over $8,000,000. As a result over seventy legitimate family planning clinics, whether they provide 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 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 in state and federal government, are much too numerous for me to include here.
“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 Restrictions on Abortion Providers) laws are really about making abortion safer for women." “Abortion is painful to a fetus.” All blatant lies.
All of the above statements are typical of the blatant lies 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 lies with those who are trying to end it.
These lies, distortions, and bizarre myths 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 mind-abducted human nature to believe what one wants to believe 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 its proven falsehood (reminding one of the old truism that “a lie makes it several times around the world before truth gets its boots on”).
“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
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. 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 abortion care to counter what they have been told by charlatans they mistakenly regard as authorities and in a great many cases frightened, indoctrinated, and virtually brainwashed into uncritically believing. (like, “You will burn in hell for eternity unless you believe what I tell you!”) They have themselves been deceived and caught up in this zealous emotionalism and honestly believe they are doing good and that the lies and distortions, even the more fantastic and ridiculous examples, actually represent 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 forcing their religious beliefs onto others and onto all of society that they are impervious to either the reason or the acknowledgement of simple fact that would correct their misconceptions. They are thus not only closed-minded and misinformed, but also obstinately ineducable. Their minds have been abducted. 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. 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. Their minds have been abducted and their (God-given they would insist) capacity for critical thinking is no longer available to them.
“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
“To argue with a person who has renounced reason is like administering
medicine to the dead.”
- Thomas Paine
Meanwhile:
“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, 2008
The so-called “pro-lifers” believe that’s just great and are determined to force such atrocities on our United States.