----- Original Message -----
From: dremi
To: wharri3365@cox-internet.com
Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2002 4:48 AM
Subject: You are nothing more than a butcher.
Copntreception is available to all.
Abortion isn't birth control, it is murder.
You are a murderer.
Donna Remi-
NJ, USA
My name, my address, my home and office phone numbers, and later, my emal address, I have made readily available to my patients since I first entered the private practice of Ob/Gyn in July, 1972. This means, of course, that they are also readily available to anyone else who wishes to praise, or petition, or accuse me.
My patients have, for the most part, been exceptionally protective of my time and privacy, sometimes delaying, to the point of self detriment, calling me about problems they are experiencing.
People like Donna Remi-, only a partial name BTW - have not been so protective.
Before it became an easily prosecutable federal crime to render terroristic threats over the telephone, I received an number of death threats from people like "my" Donna. And during the first few months after my name and email address showed up on google as an abortion provider, I received many hundreds of emails like Donna's.
Initially, I answered these, since I had the sender's email address also, and after answering, deleted the messages and my replies. However, the University of Arkansas Library requested that I give them my "papers", and I thought that these constituted as significant a group of papers as any snail mail communications I had received over the years, and I have kept many of these as printed emails.
Since the time of Donna's communication with me, I have received far fewer email messages in opposition to my work. I suppose this is because I civilly answered every letter I received.
I thought some of you might be interested in what these communications are like.
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill
To: dremi
Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2002 10:14 AM
Subject: Re: You are nothing more than a butcher.
Dear Donna Thank you for expressing your viewpoint. Many people share it. Interestingly, most of them say that they get this opinion from their reading of scripture. I know of nothing in the Bible which expresses this opposition to abortion without a lot of very tenuous interpretation open to dispute by those of us with a different view.
There are, however, a great many things which are definitely forbidded by specific Biblical verses that people like you seemingly pay no heed to.
For instance, the verses in Matthew where Jesus himself warns us not to pray in public, especially not in schools and churches like "the hypocrites and Pharisees do," but to go into our closet and pray in secret. And how about the one about not judging others lest we ourselves be judged. Then there are dozens of dietary apparel restrictions which are constantly ignored by most Christians, and very explicit instructions on how to build a place of worship and how animals should be sacrificed to the glory of God.
Oh, and how about that one that warns women against "instructing" men, sort of like you just did to me. And a whole host of other things which seem to have been totally forgotten. Well, I suppose the one about women not instructing men has not been ignored by the RCC.
I know all the arguments about abortion put forward by your side of the issue, both religious and secular, and find them totally unconvincing. And if your reason is because of something you find in the Bible, you must have a different Bible than I do, or read it a totally different way.
I am going to send you a letter that I composed several years ago in answer to many young people's questions about why I provide abortions. (See my diary, Why I Provide Abortion :http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/31/22921/8574 ). I hope you will read it. By the way, if you feel that abortion is a crime, I hope you never feel compelled to have one. (But if you do, how do you think you should be punished... life in prison? hanged by the neck until dead? This italicised items I just added.)
As to your statement that birth control is available to all, unfortunately this is not the case. Nor is every attempt at contraception successful even for those for whom it is available. There are about 10 million American women who take the birth control pill. More than 2% of the time the pill fails in any one year. This means that for those women taking the pill faithfully who are sexually active, about 500,000 will get pregnant. Almost half these women will feel that this particular pregnancy is so calamitous for themselves, or more frequently for their families, that they will opt for abortion.
The failure rates for most other commonly used methods of birth control are even greater than for the pill. And the "natural," or rhythm method of BC, which is the only method approved by the Catholic Church, fails in any one year for almost 50% of those who use it.
Thanks for writing. wfh