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You are here: Home / Politics / Religion / Religious Nuts 2 / We’re All Just Props in Their Fetus Fetish

We’re All Just Props in Their Fetus Fetish

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This is sick and disgusting:

In spring of 2013, Itai Gravely received what must have been an alarming phone call from a man named Dr. Byron Calhoun. A year earlier, Gravely had obtained an abortion at the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia to terminate a nine-week pregnancy. Calhoun was the physician who treated her at the Charleston Area Medical Center Women and Children’s Hospital (CAMC) the next day, for severe pain and bleeding, suffering what appeared to be complications from the abortion.

During that phone call, Calhoun told Gravely for the first time that when he had examined her at CAMC a year prior, he had found a 13-week old fetal skull in her uterus. In addition to giving Gravely this new information, Calhoun gave her the name and number of well-known anti-choice lawyer Jeremy Dys—a move that a West Virginia judge would later call “remarkable.”

Calhoun kept one crucial detail from Gravely during that phone call, a detail that might have made her think twice before calling a lawyer: The pathology report which was conducted after her treatment at CAMC established that there was no fetal skull present in Gravely’s uterus, and contradicted Calhoun’s claims to the contrary. Calhoun had been presented with that pathology report long before he decided to pick up the phone and dial Gravely’s number.

Based on the evidence, it’s hard to avoid a conclusion that Calhoun—who did not reply to our emails seeking comment for this report—lied to Gravely, dragging the young woman and her most personal information into a bitter public fight over abortion care, using her as a prop in his own ideological campaign.

Put someone through that trauma just to advance your cause.

Reader Interactions

65Comments

  2. 2.

    geg6

    Sick, sick people. Just sick. Sociopaths, as far as I’m concerned. No concern whatsoever for actual human beings. Completely self-involved and willing to use any measure to prop up their self-image and power over those considered less than. Only white males and fetuses are even considered worthy of consideration.

  3. 3.

    Betty Cracker

    Wait, what? I have no trouble believing Calhoun is a sick, ghoulish prick who seeks to manipulate unsuspecting patients for his own political ends — and hell, maybe even a kickback from the anti-choice ambulance chaser.

    But why would he flat-out lie to Gravely when he must have known he would be exposed as a liar and possibly put his medical license in jeopardy and risk a big fat lawsuit? It sounds to me (from reading that excerpt, anyway) that he’s incompetent as well as being a sick, ghoulish prick, etc. He must have mixed up the medical records of something — it doesn’t make sense otherwise.

  4. 4.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I see Scott Walker says requiring a vaginal ultrasound is “neat.” Oh wait, “cool.”

    I have no words.

  5. 5.

    Valdivia

    WTF? So this Dr Calhoun lied so that she would sue and make a brouhaha out and an abortion scandal? I hope she sues the pants off of him.

  6. 6.

    Elizabelle

    Some good news, for a dismal thread:

    Nebraska has abolished the death penalty. Its legislature overrode its Republican governor’s veto.

    WTG Nebraska!

  7. 7.

    scav

    Ah, a gentleman, a doctor and that certain brand of Christian, living up to to his multiple re-enforcing lines of self-proclaimed supremely unequaled ethical conduct.

  9. 9.

    D58826

    Totally OT but Rand isn’t making himself very popular with the GOOPERS

    Rand Paul: ISIS ‘Exists And Grows Stronger’ Because Of GOP Hawks

    Now that is going to cause a world of hurt somewhere

  10. 10.

    qwerty42

    This would all seem to be a violation of medical and professional ethics and practice. How does he still hold a license to practice?

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    @Valdivia: Indeed.

    Coincidentally, a convict on Nebraska’s death row died of natural causes today. He was imprisoned for two “cult killings” and that’s literally all I know from the NYTimes newsbite.

  12. 12.

    shawn

    This sucks. I fully believe birth control abortion is wrong and ghastly (as is the death penalty – i am a double lifer) but it gets really hard to stand on the same side of the line as some of these people. I hope a prominent pro-life figure harshly and publicy condemns this guy. All the pro-abortion people will they are right to do so, but flushing out the fringe requires somebody on the same side to stand up and say no.

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    @Iowa Old Lady: I have words. Perhaps Mr. Walker would find it “neat” and “cool” if we stuck a similar wand up his ass. It would, after all, be every bit as medically justified.

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    @D58826:

    Now that is going to cause a world of hurt somewhere

    Most likely in the Rand Paul camp. Anyone who thinks speaking unpleasant truths is the way to win the Republican nomination needs to contact my Nigerian friend for the business opportunity of a lifetime.

  21. 21.

    Mike in NC

    Can’t wait for the GOP debates to begin, where the audience will clap loudest for the loon who promises the death penalty for any physician who performs an abortion for any reason whatsoever.

  22. 22.

    srv

    @Iowa Old Lady: Context matters:

    I’ll give you an example. I’m pro-life, I’ve passed pro-life legislation. We defunded Planned Parenthood, we signed a law that requires an ultrasound. Which, the thing about that, the media tried to make that sound like that was a crazy idea. Most people I talk to, whether they’re pro-life or not, I find people all the time who’ll get out their iPhone and show me a picture of their grandkids’ ultrasound and how excited they are, so that’s a lovely thing. I think about my sons are 19 and 20, you know we still have their first ultrasound picture. It’s just a cool thing out there.

  24. 24.

    weaselone

    @srv:
    the context is that he downplayed forcing a woman to get an unnecessary vaginal ultrasound as no big deal.

  25. 25.

    Lavocat

    I want to see this on PAGE ONE of the NYT.

    Scream it from the rooftops.

    These fuckers need to be constantly exposed to the light of day and the scorn of humanity.

    This motherfucker should lose his medical license over this!

  26. 26.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @srv:

    Same old conservative patter: consent doesn’t matter, so if a woman consents to have sex with her boyfriend, she’s fair game for any other man and doesn’t get to complain about “rape.” So because people with wanted babies get excited about showing off ultrasounds, it’s A-OK to force unwilling women to have them since consent and context doesn’t matter.

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @srv:

    People enjoy sex, ergo sex should be forced on everyone.

    The context does make a difference.

  28. 28.

    mai naem mobile

    I.have to wonder if this woman’s heroin habit wasn’t used against her in some form of leverage. I have a friend who has the right attitude towards prolifers. Get in line to adopt these baybees you profess to care about so much. These include the biracial ones and the ones.with severe cerebral palsy or the baybee with the meth addicted mother. You don’t get to pick the cute looking white baybee with the 10 apgar score.

  29. 29.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @srv: I agree that context matters, which is why I object to conflating an ultrasound a woman chooses to have with one that’s forced on her. The ultrasounds grandparents are happily showing are not the ones he was asked about.

  31. 31.

    fuckwit

    They’re not anti-choice, they’re anti-sex. Actually, they’re not even anti-sex, they’re anti-woman.

    They’re plenty pro-sex for the men, when it means sexual slavery for the women like the Duggars. They’re just against the women enjoying sex or having any control over their lives other than to funtion as baby-factories.

  33. 33.

    D58826

    @Mike in NC: Not to worry. According to the newest candidate Rick Santorium the job of C-in-C is not an entry level position. So in one sentence he eliminated the entire GOP clown car

  34. 34.

    Patrick

    @srv:

    You people are so funny in your sheer hypocrisy. You scream of tyranny when Obama does just about anything. Yet, people like you want the government to force a women to have vaginal ultrasound. And then, rather than tyranny you instead think it is neat/cool or whatever. Good grief…

  35. 35.

    MomSense

    My mom called me today to vent about this. She’s pissed that the rights she fought for are never actually won because we have to keep defending them. Something is seriously wrong with Calhoun. This is completely crazy behavior.

    And Walker is an idiot. Do you know how insulting it is for women to have to defend our right to make decisions for our own bodies from moronic men who don’t even know the basics about reproductive health and medicine?
    This is bullshit.

  37. 37.

    boatboy_srq

    This is just horrible.

    Calhoun performed an ultrasound on Gravely, and what he saw—or didn’t see—on that ultrasound image would become a crucial element of the case, going directly to Calhoun’s competence and credibility.

    According to the lawsuit, Calhoun claimed that he saw a 13-week fetal skull in Gravely’s uterus when he reviewed the ultrasound, after which he ordered Gravely to undergo emergency dilation and curettage (D and C) surgery to evacuate “the remaining, degenerating, ‘products of conception’” from her uterus.

    At the time, there was no mention to Gravely about a skull remaining in her uterus.

    Perhaps that is because, according to the pathology report that was done after Gravely’s emergency D and C, there was no fetal skull present in her uterus.

    So not only did this despicable POS push the patient to sue for malpractice, he actually performed potentially unnecessary medical procedures on her at the time she was admitted, and the lied about the reasons for those procedures a year later for purely political reasons. So Calhoun is actually the malpractitioner in this case, and engaging in malpractice to push his agenda – and using claims of malpractice against other physicians to make his case.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    @MomSense:

    Do you know how insulting it is for women to have to defend our right to make decisions for our own bodies from moronic men who don’t even know the basics about reproductive health and medicine?

    Sorry to say this, but apparently not insulting enough. Of all the groups that Republicans are at war with, women are the only ones who can single-handedly defeat them at the ballot box.

  40. 40.

    boatboy_srq

    @mai naem mobile:

    I have a friend who has the right attitude towards prolifers. Get in line to adopt these baybees you profess to care about so much. These include the biracial ones and the ones.with severe cerebral palsy or the baybee with the meth addicted mother.

    THIS. PRECISELY THIS. Any anti-choicer who isn’t on board with this is a hypocrite.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @MomSense: I can only assume that it’s something about their social network that causes them to view this issue differently from other groups of women.

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    I think it’s selfishness. They know that they have options and resources which make them immune from reproductive overreach by Republicans. It’s just pure selfishness.

  43. 43.

    Howard Beale IV

    I have a copy of Leo Rosten’s Religions in America, copyrighted in 1975.

    The section on Baptists and their stand on Abortion was very telling back then. Turns out, they had no problem with abortion at all.

    Why the change? It goes back to school segregation:

    In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero.
    In Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review. In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

  46. 46.

    opiejeanne

    @rikyrah: I think he means that he’s opposed to using abortion as a form of birth control, a position I’ve heard before by people who ascribe this behavior to women who are irresponsible and use no other form of BC. It’s rare but some people believe that it’s common.
    Of course abortion is a form of birth control, which is why I did a double-take when I read it.

  47. 47.

    tazj

    Scott Walker has told the media he’s against abortion under all circumstances, no exceptions for rape or incest. He has been quoted as stating however that abortion isn’t something he “obsesses about.” Well. how wonderful for him, I’m sure he doesn’t really have to think about it at all, because he’ll never have to have one or a vaginal ultrasound.

    The comments he makes about ultrasound pictures come off as cavalier and clueless to me.

  49. 49.

    Citizen_X

    @srv: So: according to Walker, something which is pleasant in one context should be forced on women in another context. Strangely, that reminds me of something else. Hmm, can’t think of what it is. I just remember that it should have the word “legitimate” in front of it for us to take it seriously.

  51. 51.

    Howard Beale IV

    @opiejeanne: That’s because it appears you did not reads the entire article. Here’s the preceeding paragrpahs:

    Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976.
    When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
    Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

  52. 52.

    J R in WV

    I’m married to a “married white woman” and she won’t put up with this bullshit, won’t ever not vote, won’t ever vote for a Republican.

    And this so-called doctor who saw a skull, he needs his skull impacted with a tire-iron probe to knock some sense into his brain! What an evil monster!

    Like most modern Republicans, his head is an ethics free zone in almost every way. How repulsive can you get?

  53. 53.

    satby

    @Citizen_X: also, the ultrasounds that people are happily showing off are done over the belly, in other words: NONINVASIVE. Vaginal ultrasounds are done by shoving a very large probe up into the vagina, it’s demeaning and uncomfortable even when it’s done for medical reasons like fibroids (go ahead, ask me how I know), and if I was forced to have a medically unnecessary one just as a shaming mechanism, I would and do consider it a state rape.

  54. 54.

    Matt

    Sadly, even if Dr. Calhoun gets kicked out of the medical profession as he SO RICHLY DESERVES FOR BEING A LYING FUCKSTICK he’s got a nigh-infinite gravy train of wingnut welfare awaiting him.

  55. 55.

    Glidwrith

    @MomSense: All right, I’ve had enough of this broad brushing crap. Married white woman here and it would make your hair curl to hear how I chew Duncan Hunter up one side and down the other for the garbage he and the Thugs spew concerning women and our rights. It usually starts out with telling them there aren’t enough four letter words to describe what they are doing and goes downhill from there. Roughly 40% of us do know the score and the gratuitous condemnation is getting tiresome.

  56. 56.

    Tenar Darell

    The only thing that is making this news story tolerable (since I’m resisting pulling out my hair) is that yesterday or today the California Assembly passed a bill which would regulate Crisis Pregnancy Centers so that are not allowed to lie about what they are anymore. Because lying to women about their healthcare options is wrong. (My mother is rolling in her grave that this law is even necessary).

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    @Glidwrith:

    I too am a white woman. if you can’t see the problem with a solid majority of our demographic voting Republican than nothing I say is going to make a difference to you.

  59. 59.

    bg

    I guaranfuckingtee that the ultrasounds his friends show him aren’t from transvaginal ultasounds. At the stage they are requiring them, the fetus doesn’t look like a baby. That’s why they have to be transvaginal – it’s too small and undeveloped to show up on a regular ultrasound.
    Having had one for medical purposes I can tell you that it’s painful and humiliating, even when there’s a good reason for it.
    When it’s not medically necessary, it’s rape.

  60. 60.

    Glidwrith

    @MomSense: Of course I see the problem, but it gets a little old with you and Baud blithely condemning a whole demographic when there are lots of us -no, not a majority, but we’re not 27%ers either- out there fighting with our own families, putting out money and yelling at congresscritters over this. Just like folks that live in those islands of blue in red states, wholesale condemnation is not appreciated.

  61. 61.

    Fort Geek

    @opiejeanne: Basically, the fundies couldn’t keep using desegregation of schools as their platform anymore.

    Jerry “Moral Majority” Falwell started out preaching that “integration will destroy our race.” Since he and his buddies could no longer practically/openly discriminate against blacks, they needed something new to drive their wingnut supporters.

    So they started using abortion as a political “wedge” to get support for Republicans, starting with Reagan in 1980.

  64. 64.

    boatboy_srq

    @Betty Cracker: @Paul in KY: It didn’t matter that Calhoun was lying his a## off. What mattered was that Gravely contacted the attorney and filed the lawsuit in time for the public brouhaha so the legislature and courts would get bad information and move the way Calhoun (and others) wanted. The case fell apart – but it fell apart after the WV A.G. got involved and joined the witch hunt, so the damage was done.

  65. 65.

    Wally Ballou

    @fuckwit: This.

    Also too, demographic panic and the belief that the blacks, browns, poors, and other demographic undesirables are taking over the country because white middle-class Christian women have let feminism tempt them into abdicating their duty to pump out lots and lots of good white middle-class Christian babies.

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