Dr. Bob Deuell is a family practitioner and "evangelical Christian" in Greenville, Texas, a small city northeast of Dallas. As a state senator in 2013 he marshaled the now famous, horrific antiabortion legislation, HB2, through the state legislature with transparent lies and childish theatrics. To my mailing him an announcement of my new book he responded in a snarky, hastily scribbled note with the words:
William West, M.D.
P.O.Box 1002
Cedar Hill, Texas 75106 – 1002
williamwestmd@swbell.net
General and Child Psychiatry Obstetrics and Gynecology
“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
April 16, 2016
Subject: Reply to Dr. Bob Deuell’s simplistic note to me
Dr. Deuell:
Oh! If only it was that simple!
You are hardly one to raise the banner for “facts,” truth, justice, understanding, or compassion after the tawdry marathon of callousness, misogyny, ignorance, and lies (the “false witness” forbidden by your “holy” book’s Big 10 , by the way) in which you were a major player and supporter in the special sessions of the Texas Legislature in the summer of 2013 that resulted in the draconian tragedy of HB2. Human lives , human women and teenage girls, are suffering and DYING, right now, throughout this state as the direct result of the crimes against humanity fostered by you and your ilk. Has that fact “escaped you?”Or do you just not give a damn?
There are facts, and there are beliefs. And there are beliefs about facts, as well as beliefs with no factual basis whatever -- beliefs without a whit of credible evidence to support them that are held just because of indoctrination, tradition, and fear -- or in the hope of some kind of personal gain. Like the purely imaginary claims that there was a critical danger in Texas of unchecked “dangerous” conditions in abortion clinics, although there was clear and abundant evidence that this just wasn’t so -- or the purely specious and completely ridiculous false claims that HB2 would make abortion “safer.” You strike me as a shallow and simple man who, while vainly regarding himself as much more than he is, is governed by unfounded beliefs and willful ignorance, not facts. I guess many facts have just “escaped you.” That’s a shame.
Read my book. It is full to the brim of facts that have apparently “escaped you.”
"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose
mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."
- Thomas Jefferson
The subject of abortion rights is a profoundly important one, although its importance is widely unrecognized or denied due to the social stigma attached to it that acts to force it into hiding under a veil of fear, shame, and guilt created by ancient taboos regarding sexuality and reproduction. One-third of American women under the age of forty-five have had at least one abortion. Has that fact “escaped you?” Prior to the de facto nationwide legalization of abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973 that allowed experienced physicians to safely provide abortion care, unsafe illegal abortions were the leading cause of death among women and girls of childbearing age. Has that fact “escaped you?” I would not - could not - either lie or pretend to forgive the lies of others about it. As the saying goes, I have to look at myself in a mirror every morning.
“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
And that is just those who DIE, Dr. “Pro-Lifer.” Many times that number are seriously injured and maimed.
Has that fact “escaped you” -- or do you just not give a damn?
Until halted, in 2013, by the pernicious and misguided Texas law, HB2, I was a proud, even defiant, abortion provider, and, believe me, defiance was an asset in the sociopolitical climate in which I provided abortion care. I’d like to assure you that it is not that I love embryos and fetuses less, but that I love women and teenage girls much more – although I must confess that, while I respect and share any woman’s delight in a desired pregnancy and any woman’s grief and despair in learning that a desired pregnancy is doomed by a tragic fetal anomaly or spontaneous abortion (“miscarriage”), I really have no love, nor any feeling at all, for insentient zygotes, embryos, and fetuses in the wombs of women and teenage girls who do not want them there for their own very personal and private reasons.
I respect and feel deep compassion for the dominion of any conscious human female over her own body and all that exists within it and feel no compassion for as yet insentient zygotes, embryos, and fetuses that she doesn’t want there, whatever her own reasons, regarding her as the world’s foremost authority on her own best interests (until proven otherwise and with a few exceptions) and realizing that she cannot enjoy the personal freedom and human rights this nation was founded upon unless her own authority and individual responsibility over herself and her own body is respected by society and its laws. Neither do I respect, condone, nor forgive attempts to force religious beliefs of any variety upon anyone by coercive law. Efforts to do that, which are all too common and all too strenuous, are as un-American as it gets.
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
- Mark Twain
Spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, happens when a female human being’s human body isn’t ready to go through pregnancy and childbirth and have a baby, and it happens frequently, in fact in 50% or more of all pregnancies. Elective abortion by choice happens when her human heart and human mind aren’t ready to go through pregnancy and childbirth and have a baby, which happens much less often.
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, legal, 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 or of any other religious belief system. Not that of über-Godly ex-Governor and Ignorant Bigot and Panderer-in-Chief Rick Perry (now, even worse, über-Godly Governor and Ignorant Bigot 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.
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.
My book, “Pro-Life” Is Pro-LIE – They Don’t Care That Women Suffer and DIE, provides a chance for you to start learning and knowing better. For your own good read it. Or do you just not give a damn?
By the way, you figure prominently in the book. It should appeal to your narcissism.
William West, M.D. (Beket on DKos)