A Book of American Martyrs(37)

It was a mistake to open such letters, she knew. And yet.

So awful, she might fall to her knees on the (hardwood) floor clutching such a letter in her hand.

Her face was a face crushed in a vise of pain. Her face was a face you dared not look at, the fear was you might burst into laughter like a silly child scared to death.

Now you know what its like you athiest bitch. You & yours will rot in Hell.

BABY KILLERS





INTERVIEW(S)


What do you remember most about your father Dr. Augustus—“Gus”—Voorhees?

What do you remember most about your family life in Michigan?

And where specifically did you live in Michigan?—Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Bay City and—one or two residences in Detroit?

Did you always live with both your parents, or did your father sometimes live elsewhere? And if so, did Dr. Voorhees try to get home often?

Did you ever visit him?

How were his absences explained by your mother—(if they were explained)? Did you and your siblings miss not having a father you saw more often?

How did you and your family feel, having to move so frequently?

Did it interfere with your schooling? Your social life?

(Did you have a “social life”?)

Were your teachers aware of who your father was? Your classmates, friends? Your neighbors? How did that impact upon your relationships?

Were you proud of your father?

Did you (sometimes) resent your father?

Did you love your father?


IT WAS SAID—by your father—that your mother Jenna Matheson was the “ideal wife/companion” for him—did it seem to you, and to your brother and sister, as far as you can speak for them, that your parents’ marriage was “ideal”?

Did your mother ever express regret, or disappointment, or frustration that she’d had to set her law career aside, to help further your father’s work?—to be a full-time mother and assistant for Dr. Voorhees, for many years?

Was your mother a “full-time” mother—or is that an exaggeration?

Was it known to you and your siblings that your father was a “tireless crusader” for women’s reproductive rights in the Midwest and in Michigan especially?

Was it known to you that your father was a “crusader” for abortion rights?

Did you know, as children, what “abortion rights” meant?

Did you know that your father performed abortions?

Did you know that your father had many enemies?

Did you know that your father was considered “difficult”—even by those who were his allies?

Have you read your father’s published writings? His (famous, controversial) address to the National Women’s Leadership Conference in 1987, in Washington, D.C.—are you familiar with that?

“There cannot be a free democracy in which one sex is shackled to ‘biological destiny’ ”—are you familiar with this much-reiterated remark of Dr. Gus Voorhees?

Do you or have you ever felt, as a girl, that you are “shackled to ‘biological destiny’ ”—or did you inherit a strong feminist identity from your parents?

Is there anything you regret, from your childhood in Michigan? Anything you wish might have been otherwise?—(excluding of course the tragic ending to your father’s life).


WERE YOUR PARENTS HAPPY?

What was it like to be a child of Gus Voorhees?

And for your mother—what do you think it was like for Jenna Matheson to be Gus Voorhees’s wife?

Were you aware as children of the many threats against your father’s life?

Were you aware of acts of vandalism, death threats, bomb threats directed against the women’s centers with which your father was associated? And how did your mother react to these, so far as you know?

In the Free Choice movement Gus Voorhees has been called a “great man”—“a brave martyr for the cause”; but in the Pro-Life movement Gus Voorhees has been called, for example, by the conservative Catholic philosopher Willard Wolhman, a “thoroughly evil, amoral man”—a “mass murderer as evil as a Nazi war criminal.” How do you and your family feel about such extreme reactions to Dr. Voorhees?

How was the news broken to you and your siblings, that your father had been killed on November 2, 1999, at the Broome County, Ohio, Women’s Center in Muskegee Falls, Ohio?

Were you informed, at the time, that Dr. Voorhees had been assassinated by a lone gunman associated with the right-wing Christian organizations Army of God and Operation Rescue?—or did you learn these details at a later date, when you were older?

Were you allowed—in time—to read about your father’s death, or to watch TV news or documentaries? Did you attend any of the several memorials for Dr. Voorhees in Ann Arbor, Lansing, Detroit?

Was your father’s death a terrible shock to you, your brother Darren, and your sister Melissa? Did your loss draw you closer together—or did your loss have the opposite effect?

Your mother Jenna Matheson has refused all requests for interviews following your father’s death—is this for reasons of privacy, for reasons of (mental) health, or is your mother preparing a memoir of her life with Gus Voorhees and is not inclined to share personal memories with the media?

Where does your mother live at the present time? (Are you aware that mail sent to Jenna Matheson at any former address is returned to the sender as “undeliverable”?)