A Book of American Martyrs(57)
Twelve days later a bearded middle-aged man showed up at the clinic demanding to speak with Gus Voorhees he called the abortionist-murderer.
He was a lawyer for the Methodist Emmanuel Church of Saginaw, he said. He had an “affidavit” from one of the church members, N—— C——, claiming that she’d been drugged and held captive by Dr. Voorhees and the medical staff at the clinic and made to submit to an “illegal operation” killing her baby. The family of N—— C—— and the Methodist Emmanuel Church of Saginaw were demanding $15 million in “damages” or they would go to the Saginaw police. They would go to the local newspaper, TV . . .
Eventually, they settled for just $3,500.
ARE YOU SURPRISED? Often, we paid. When reasonable amounts of money were involved and we couldn’t take the risk of a civil trial.
You wouldn’t have known. Such settlements are kept quiet. But your mother knew, presumably. If Gus hadn’t told her, someone else would have.
How many?—maybe a dozen, in all. These were spurious lawsuits initiated by plaintiffs like the Saginaw church, or individuals representing women who’d had abortions and when it was discovered, they claimed that they’d been “drugged” and “coerced.” For our firm—(be sure you get the name right, it’s Federman, McMahan, & Scapalini, Ann Arbor)—it was mostly pro bono—we have a longtime commitment to the sort of community medical care your father and his associates have been providing in Michigan.
We settled with the Saginaw church though it was extortion pure and simple. We advised Gus not to go to trial, you never know what a jury or even a judge might award such a plaintiff if the “bereaved” mother gave testimony weeping and praying on the witness stand. There was a strong possibility a judge would have tossed out the suit but we couldn’t take that chance, given the rural judiciary in some counties in Michigan.
Not the woman N—— C——, in this case. We didn’t think she was behind it. Someone else. There’s always someone else. The woman isn’t the one to initiate a lawsuit but someone who is using her—Follow the sperm trail.
The one who impregnates the woman is likely to be the one who uses her.
One thing we learned: a woman’s religion—(even if she calls herself a Born-Again Christian)—doesn’t seem to make any difference, when it comes to abortion. That is not generally known, and most people would not believe it.
Your father was not vindictive. If he could, he turned no one away. He trusted people—too much, sometimes.
He’d gone into public health medicine knowing he’d never make money. With a private practice in the Detroit suburbs, he could’ve been a very wealthy man. And he’d be alive now.
Wait—don’t get the wrong impression, Naomi. Maybe I’ve been giving the wrong impression.
For an abortion-provider doctor, with so many enemies, your father was actually sued very rarely. Malpractice suits are not uncommon through all medical specialties.
He knew this. He didn’t complain. He had a great sense of humor, like an ancient Greek stoic. One of our friends knitted a sampler for him, for his office wall in Saginaw—NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.
Look, I loved Gus. I loved your father. But working with him wasn’t always easy. He took a great risk going to Ohio when he did, after the women’s center there had almost been shut down. He knew—or he’d been told—that there was a heavily organized anti-abortion movement in that part of Ohio funded by conservative Republicans. It was a political shit-storm he stepped into, he tried to pretend wasn’t there. And once he arrived in Ohio, he ignored everything except running the center.
Gus never learned to delegate authority and at times he’d become emotional. He lacked what you’d call “nuance”—“diplomacy.”
It doesn’t help to denounce a Michigan legislator as a “moral troglodyte”—even when it’s true.
You know, speaking of Gus Voorhees at the memorials for him, writing about him, is not so difficult. There’s a language for that—the elevated language of eulogy. But this you’re asking me, remembering the actual work Gus did, the work we did for him, the crazy lawsuits, the extortion, blackmail, threats . . . It’s like Gus is in the room with me shaking his head, laughing. We came through a lot together.
Was Gus Voorhees a “visionary”?—I don’t know, Naomi. I think he was an idealist who worked damn hard. Certainly he had greatness of spirit, magnanimity—more than any other individual I’ve met.
But that brings with it a kind of blindness, too.
Your father always assumed—(all evidence to the contrary!)—that his cause was so just, so sensible and so selfless, his model the social welfare states of northern Europe that provide free health coverage to all citizens and have no restrictions about abortion, that eventually everyone would understand. He seemed to think that even the “enemy” understood, fundamentally, and could be won over . . .
Consider the Biblical Jesus. Not as the son of God (as the Biblical Jesus thought of himself, which we might recognize as delusional) but as a visionary; a man so convinced of his own goodness and the justice of his mission, he can’t comprehend that anyone might disagree with him let alone want to harm or kill him.
Of course I don’t mean that Gus Voorhees was “delusional”—don’t look at me as if I’ve stuck a knife in your heart. You told me to speak openly and so I have.