While the late Pope John Paul II was still alive, my office staff and I received a letter from Sister Mary Theresa asking me
"to turn away from murdering babies and causing God and Jesus much suffering."
Fortunately, unlike so many of the hateful, and hatefilled, letters I get from "Pro-Lifers," Sister Mary had sent me her return address. So I made this reply.
Letter to a RCC nun
11/07/03
Dear Sister Mary Theresa
I am writing this for all of us who work here at the Fayetteville Women’s Clinic.
I am sure that you sincerely believe we (not only those of us at this clinic, but the other additional thousands involved in the rescue of hundreds of thousands of young and middle aged women from the ravages of disastrous pregnancies every year) are terrible, sinful people.
I also suspect that given the circumstances of your letter that you read my name and my clinic’s name in the Readers Digest article, and further, that you are a member of one of the orders of Catholic Nuns. Am I right so far?
I am going to assume that all this is true.
About twenty years ago, safe, elective and legal abortion became for the very first time a very controversial issue in my town. President Ronald Reagan had been elected president and was pandering to the most radical elements of the religious right, especially on the issue of safe and legal elective abortion. There had been 13 physicians in my immediate area providing abortions, when suddenly, I became the only one left to provide this service in a radius of at least 90 miles. I had to make a decision about what my future practice would be like. Would I, like my colleagues, cut and run and abandon the hundreds of girls and women in our practices, or would I continue to provide what I considered a very necessary and moral aspect of my practice?
I decided to do the only thing that I could morally do, not only to continue to provide this service for the members of this community, but to educate the community about what I do and why it is necessary that I continue. So I began to write and speak about it locally almost every day. A very interesting thing happened when I did so. Suddenly, the community had a voice in support of reproductive freedom, when before only the voice of religious fanatics had been evident. And when this happened, the atmosphere of fear and the timidity that had persisted in the community since the militants had begun their campaign of intimidation very shortly after RR’s election, lifted. Now many other people of good will who favored reproductive freedom began to speak out as well. The militants became ever more desperate and violent: my office was firebombed, vandalized, and blockaded, and my, my family’s and staff’s, and my patient’s privacy and our homes violated. But when a critical mass of local support for my views and my practice was achieved, all visible local support for those who were involved in those previous community outrages faded into the woodwork.
During this time, I was introduced by one of my Catholic patients and admirers to two of our local nuns at a public place. After learning my identity, the nuns called me over, and one whispered to me as the other nodded, "We’re for you, doctor!"
From my studies of the Catholic reproductive ethic, I believe the reproductive policies of the Catholic Church would have been drastically altered had the last - and perhaps the only - good pope who ever lived, John XXIII, had a tenure as long as this present minion of the anti-Christ, John Paul II. I think the term of the present pope has been a disaster not only for the Catholic Church, but for most of the peoples of Central and South America and the sub-equatorial world. I believe that the rise of religious fundamentalism of all kinds, including Catholic and protestant Christianity, constitutes the greatest threat to the happiness of the citizens of the world and to world peace in my lifetime. If Christ was truly the Prince of Peace and lives, he must be shedding bitter tears to behold the horrors and abominations perpetrated in his name by those who cry "Lord, Lord!" as they seek to condemn millions to the suffering inflicted by an ever growing population of ignorant and superstitious adherents to a "faith" that is anathema to most His teachings.
When I visited Versailles years ago, I suddenly understood the wretched excesses of the French revolution. And when I visited Rome and the Vatican and St. Peter’s last year, I understood the absolute necessity for, and the excesses of, the Reformation. I’m just sorry it didn’t do more good.
Turn away Sister Mary! Leave this order and use your talents for good in truly doing God’s work. Let today be a new day for you!
I don't get much snail mail from the antis now days. And we hardly ever get any with a return address. Most come as the communication from cowards, hiding behind the anonimity of the US Postal Service. My office staff have explicite instructions to never open mail without a return address, but I can't seem to convince them of the dangers these may present. Or maybe they are just trying to protect me.
At 72, I am not much longer going to be providing service to my community, and I know for me, the end of my usefull life is approaching. Events like those in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, IL, make me so sad that I won't be around much longer to fight these battles. When I read the diary of Got A Grip, http://www.dailykos.com/... who attended a town meeting with no one from PP at that meeting and almost no physicians' voices raised in support of professional abortion care, I almost cried. I wish I was there to tell my story about my experience with Eric Scheidler's father, Joe's visit to my little town of Fayetteville AR in 1985.
I continue to taunt old Joe from time to time, just to let him know that I am still around and waiting for him to come back someday. But so far, Joe is a no show.
What follows is a letter I sent to him a year or so ago.
6/13/06
Joseph Scheidler
6160 N. Cicero Ave
Chicago, IL 60646Dear Joe,
Well, I have been meaning to contact you since I read that your cousin, Crazy Dow Pursley was arrested at poor Terri Schivo’s care facility in FL a year or so ago. (Was Dow really your cousin, or was he just trying to place himself in your "exalted" orbit. I never knew for sure. :-) Not so long ago, he was also in Ecuador giving some sort of lecture and mentioned having once lived in Springdale, and a couple who have been good friends for years and were living in Quito then went up after the speech and asked if he had known me. They said he wasn’t very friendly after that. Can you imagine? :-)
I have wondered for years why you never came back to Fayetteville to see us. My practice has thrived for all these years, but I guess Crazy Dow’s didn’t do so well as a "Christian Counselor" after all the efforts he spent trying to close my office.
I thought you might enjoy the book, There Is A Bomb In Gilead, I wrote about those days back in the mid 80’s, though I am pretty sure you will be disappointed that neither I nor my office has been blown up. Yet. Well, to coin a cliche, you can’t win them all.
You will probably recognize some of the characters in The Bomb, though you might not have known all their foibles. I have done several abortions on the girlfriends, wives and daughters of several of the preachers and other denizens who once circled my office on a regular basis during the time you came here with your bullhorn. Back in those days I was so angry at my medical colleagues in Fayetteville for their cowardice, and at you and your pals who invited you, thinking that you would put the fear of god in me, for your ignorance, arrogance and effrontery, that I had to write this book. (Do you remember when we had the debate on the local TV station? That was the first time I ever did that, though one sure wouldn’t know it considering how I whipped your ass. I still have copies of it if you want to see it sometime should you come back for a rematch. I think that must have been one of the negative highlights of your life. :-)
Don’t feel too badly about it though, I’ve done the same thing to all of your buddies who have come to Fayetteville trying to best me as well.
But it gets kind of lonely here now, no everyday screamers circling my office, and even the very few who do, leaving after only one or two innings. :-) I’m glad I wrote the book, and I am reading it sure this will bring back fond memories for you as well. :-)
Most sincerely,
Joe was a major character in my book, thinly disquised. And I sent him a copy of mine, but so far, I've heard nothing from my old pal Joe. And even the "40 days" events seem to be avoiding us; instead, going to Joneboro, almost 200 miles away, which has never, so far as I know, had even one abortion provider. I don't know if they have a PP there.
I suppose I will just have to continue my lonely, almost silent path here in Fayetteville until I, like Gen McArthur, and the old sailer I once was, "just fade away." :-)
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