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.
We’re All Just Props in Their Fetus FetishPost + Comments (65)