Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, Colorado–anthropologist, public health physician and specialist in abortion care–has attracted a great deal of attention by publicly exposing and denouncing the threat directed at him a couple of weeks ago by Operation Save America.
When Dr. Hern read the piece about events in Boulder that I wrote and posted here and elsewhere, he responded with an appreciative but to-the-point letter that briefly touched on his views about what is wrong with Democratic politics and how to fix it.
And now Dr. Hern gives us more.
From Dr. Hern’s letter published yesterday:
As long as the Republicans under current leadership are running anything, there is no hope. Wherever possible, we must convert this energy into solidifying Democratic control over any political institution (such as a state legislature or governor’s office) and to restore Democratic control where it has been lost (legislatures; both houses of Congress).
There is no other solution, and it can’t happen too fast. Some Democrats, particularly among the national leaders such as Howard Dean, do not understand this and are irrelevant to this process, which must come from below. Anti-choice Democrats must be blocked. The political message must be: vote with us, and you get elected; vote against us, you don’t get to be precinct captain next time. Nothing else will do.
Republicans who are not part of the current fascist leadership of that party must throw those bastards out, and that is the most important and difficult task. Only then can we get back to civil discourse and bipartisan consideration of important public issues, particularly on issues of reproductive freedom. It has happened before. We can make it happen again.
I added that:
Dr. Hern isn’t a politician. He doesn’t buy and sell abstractions. He lives in an all-too-physical world, one awash with the daily sweat and tears of living, breathing and bleeding women to whom reproductive freedom has suddenly become more than just a poll-tweaking talking point. He and all the other physicians who are still hanging in and providing skillful and compassionate abortion care in this country–come hell, high water or the ground troops, fifth column or otherwise, for the Culture of Life–don’t spend their mornings spinning policy, their lunchtimes eating rubber chicken or their afternoons counting their bargaining chips.
They live in my world, the real world, where this is the way it is.
Still, some readers of the letter expressed concern that Dr. Hern didn’t seem to appreciate sufficiently Howard Dean’s efforts to preserve reproductive freedom for women. Last May, Dr. Hern addressed his own concerns to Dr. Dean directly, and has kindly given his permission for that letter to be published.
No further introduction is necessary. As Flip Benham of Operation Save America now knows, Dr. Warren Hern is more than capable of speaking for himself.
22 May 2005
Howard Dean, M.D.
Chairman
Democratic National Committee
Washington, D.C.Dear Howard:
Congratulations on your election to the Chair of the Democratic National Committee. I appreciate the energy that you bring to this job.
Each time I see you on Meet The Press, I get more agitated with your use of anti-abortion propaganda terms to discuss the issue of abortion. You really have no excuse for this deplorable practice.
You are a physician, and you know something about this issue from a health perspective that most people don’t know. You know very well that physicians like me who specialize in abortion services are not “pro-death” or “anti-life.” But that is exactly what you imply when you use the anti-abortion propaganda term “pro-life” to describe people who are opposed to abortion. These are some of the same people who have assassinated physicians Bernard Slepian, David Gunn, and John Britton, who have assassinated other people working in abortion services, and who have attempted to assassinate yet other physicians and clinic workers.
In using this reflexively pejorative term as though it were neutral and descriptive, you have lost my support. To me it represents a thoughtlessness, carelessness and superficiality about this critical issue that is really inexcusable for a person in your position.
You surely don’t remember the occasions as well as I do, but we met first at the NARAL event in Washington in January, 2003 in Boulder at [name redacted]’s house, and at a Boulder fund-raising breakfast for you in 2004. You have published papers of mine in your possession.
Let’s get a few things straight:
- The principal reason for having abortion services legally available in the United States is for the health and safety of women. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, this was the main reason why physicians were on the forefront in advocating changes in the abortion laws. The Doe v. Bolton case, companion to Roe v. Wade, was brought by physicians and other health professionals from Atlanta.
- Abortion is a fundamental component of health care for women in the 21st century, just as it was in the last 25 years of the 20th century. You, as a physician, ought to be one of the strongest exponents of this fact in the public arena, and you have an exceptional opportunity to do that as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. So far, you have abandoned that idea in favor of fawning comments designed to satisfy the most radical right-wing religious and political opponents of abortion.
- The idea that abortion will ever be “rare” is ridiculous, and you should know that from basic education as a physician. Abortion has been practiced by women in every human society for as far back as anthropologists can determine (cf: Abortion in Primitive Society by George Devereaux). There have probably been not fewer than one million abortions per year in the United States for the past 60 or 70 years. The main difference between 1935 and 2005 is that abortions are now safely done by physicians (and, in a few cases, by physician assistants, as in Vermont) who can provide proper surgical and follow-up care.
- The idea that we can reduce the number of abortions by providing adequate contraceptive care for women and their partners is a superb and fundamental idea which the Democratic Party should (as it does) support at every opportunity, and which was eloquently stated by Senator Hillary Clinton earlier this year. But this is a position that is opposed by anti-abortion Democrats such as Robert Casey, Jr. That opposition doesn’t make any medical, public health, logical, political or legal sense.
- There is no such thing as “abortion on demand.” That is silly. There is “abortion on request,” and why not? But any woman who walks into my office and “demands” an abortion as though I were an abortion-dispensing machine will not get one, at least from me. I am a person, not an ATM or pop machine.
- Your idea of setting up “medical practice boards” to decide who gets late abortions was ruled unconstitutional in Doe v. Bolton in 1973. Look it up. You have no excuse for not knowing this. It is also an invitation for the anti-abortion nut case doctors to take over the process. Terrible idea. Drop it.
- The correct identification for late abortion is “late abortion,” not “late-term abortion” or “third term” abortions. The phrase “late-term abortion” was invented by anti-abortion people to imply that we are doing abortions “at term” (i.e. 40 weeks of pregnancy). Abortions late in the third trimester do occur, exceptionally, due to extreme circumstances, all of them health-related. But “late” abortions (after 26 weeks, approximately) account for less than 0.1% of all abortions. And these are done by very few doctors. As you may remember from our conversations, I am one of them. If you have a question about this subject, pick up the phone and call me at any time day or night (phone number redacted). For your information, I am sending you my latest research paper on this subject, “Misoprostol as an adjunctive medication in late surgical abortion” published in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics in February, 2005, in which I describe the results in over 1000 patients having late abortions, many of them for terrible fetal disorders. The major complication rate was zero. If the Republicans and anti-abortion Democrats have their way, doctors like me will be unable to help women, and the complication rates and death rates due to abortion will go back to where they were in the 19th century.
- For your interest and information, I am also enclosing an article of mine, published in Anthropology News in February, 2005, called “Anthropologists, abortion, and the cultural war in America.” The online version of this may be found at www.drhern.com/ abanthropologists.htm.
- The idea that you are going to make the Democratic Party candidates more acceptable to anti-abortion fanatics, evangelicals, rock-ribbed Republicans etc. by getting rid of the words “choice” and “abortion” is absurd. See my second point. George Lakoff is right: “choice” is a consumer value word, but it carries a lot of meaning for people who vote Democratic because they have understood, up till now, that the Democratic Party stands up for women’s rights. Abandon that constituency and that language at your peril. For one thing, it makes you look obsequious, and being obsequious did not put you where you are.
- “Choice” is not just a consumer value word about a material possession. It has real meaning in terms of people’s lives. In this instance, it has real meaning in terms of women’s lives. If abortion is legal and safe, a woman may choose whether to reproduce or not, or she may choose to have an abortion rather than to have a higher risk of death in childbirth. That is not “gimme more stuff” choice, that is a choice about being. This is about a choice to be.
If women are not free to be, in what way are they free?
If this country is not about the freedom to be, what it is about?
Abortion is an essential medical service that is necessary for women. It saves their lives. People who think that safe, legal abortion services should not be available to women should vote Republican.
There are a lot of reasons why John Kerry and the Democrats lost the last presidential election, but support for reproductive freedom is not one of them. There are more people who support reproductive freedom in this country than there are people who don’t support it. Our challenge is to get the people who support reproductive freedom to vote, and to get them to vote on this issue.
Abortion has been the critical issue in American politics since Bob Dole disgracefully used the abortion issue to get re-elected in 1974 and since Ronald Reagan announced that he would try to make abortion a political crime against the state in 1980. Saying that we won’t talk about this won’t make it go away.
Are you for freedom for women, or aren’t you?
If women are not free to have safe abortions by physicians, they are not free. If women are not free, none of us are free.
Best personal regards,
Warren M. Hern, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Director
Boulder Abortion ClinicCc: George Lakoff, Ph.D.
Pat Waak, Chair, Colorado Democratic Party
Hon. Hillary Clinton
Hon. John Kerry
Hon. Ted Kennedy
Hon. Harry Reid
Hon. Nancy Pelosi
Hon. Chuck Schumer
Hon. Barbara Boxer
Hon. Ken Salazar
Hon. Diana DeGette
Hon. Mark Udall
Hon. John Salazar
Vanessa Cullins, M.D., M.B.A., Vice President for Medical Affairs Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Ellie Smeal, Feminist Majority Foundation
National Abortion Federation
NARAL Pro-Choice America
Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health
Hmmm. Maybe it’s a shame that Dr. Hern isn’t a politician. Whether you agree with him or not, you don’t have to wonder where he stands: shoulder to shoulder with me.