American Document / Chicken Koop
Cunningham, C. Everett Koop vs. Gregg L.
T he following letters were exchanged between Gregg L. Cunningham of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general of the United States, in the days following...
...You now seem determined to create a sequel to that debacle...
...You would do better if you refrain from trying to be eloquent in your rhetoric and just ask a simple question about something you apparently don't understand...
...My staff and my family have urged me not to answer your letter, feeling that the effort is really not worth it for someone so far off the truth in his assessment...
...As you may recall that law went on to be litigated in the United States Supreme Court case of Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology...
...September 24, 1993 Dear Dr...
...Koop but signed in his absence...
...Respectfully, Gregg L. Cunningham Executive Director Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Anaheim, California • • • 7 October 1993 Dear Mr...
...You may fancy yourself above the fray in the role of honest broker but your presence at Mrs...
...I am dismayed that you would not have conditioned your willingness to facilitate development of this plan on President Clinton's willingness to abandon abortion coverage...
...T he following letters were exchanged between Gregg L. Cunningham of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general of the United States, in the days following President Clinton's address to a joint session of Congress on national health care reform...
...No matter how well intentioned your analysis may have been I remain convinced that that report could have been drafted in a way that would have preserved your admirable commitment to intellectual honesty without doing such irreparable damage to our ability to establish an abortion–psychological complications connection—a nexus which you yourself later embraced at least at an anecdotal level...
...My purpose in writing is to express my confusion regarding what seems to have been your decision to unqualifiedly associate yourself with the Clinton health care plan and by implication its avowed intent to provide abortion coverage...
...I remain grateful for your invaluable assistance during that meeting and the subsequent telephonic consultations you generously granted during the early days of your tenure as Surgeon General of the United States...
...Koop, You and I first met in 1980 when you were Chief of Pediatric Surgery at Philadelphia Children's Hospital and I was a young state legislator seeking your counsel as I drafted what was later to become the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act...
...Sincerely yours, C. Everett Koop, M.D...
...In a recent call to your office I was informed by a member of your staff that your role would be advisory in nature with your primary function as that of moderator between the administration and the medical profession...
...Get out there and give 'em heaven...
...Over the last several years, as I have debated the abortion issue across the nation, it has been my painful experience to have been repeatedly assaulted by abortion advocates who gleefully beat me over the head with your now infamous report to President Reagan discrediting clinical studies purporting to link abortion with adverse psychological reactions...
...This is not an administration that responds as well to being shown the light as they do to being made to feel the heat...
...Koop, seated next to Hillary Clinton for the president's speech, had endorsed the plan at a White House breakfast two days earlier, saying, "President Clinton has already accomplished more in health care reform than all of his living predecessors combined...
...It is not my desire to give you either assurances or comfort...
...Your vain attempt to find the safety of a fictional middle ground will provide aid and comfort to enemies of life and immeasurably increase the burden which must be borne by those who labor to detach baby killing from health care...
...While Monday morning quarterbacks such as you stand on the sidelines and criticize others who are in the fray, let me say that I am responsible not to you but to my God for the way I act...
...It now appears, however, that Mrs...
...I pray you will not squander it...
...Cunningham, and you should be ashamed of your scholarship...
...Having now returned to a position of influence on the national health care scene, I implore you to disregard the disfavor of the media and the disapproval of your professional colleagues and provide the leadership for which so many of us had hoped during the Reagan years...
...But I would like to make clear that my association with the President and the First Lady and their health care reform package is to act as a moderator in a dialogue between the Administration and the medical profession...
...Clinton may have granted you an extraordinary opporChicken Koop tunity to reverse the widely held impression that your opposition to abortion is more personal than political...
...You are mean spirited, Mr...
...Ed...
...I am even more disturbed that in no public statement of which I am aware have you condemned the abortion coverage provision or expressed any intention to seek its removal...
...71 The American Spectator January 1994 41...
...America needs advocates more than arbiters...
...Cunningham: It surprises me that you were once a state legislator and now purport to be the Executive Director of a center for bioethical reform, yet have so little understanding of what you write...
...I fondly recall the heady optimism with which many pro-life elected officials looked forward to a public health chief as willing as we to imperil his incumbency in defense of unborn life...
...I write only to say one thing...
...I intend no disrespect but would be remiss were I not to note the extremity of the gulf between our hopes and your priorities...
...Bethesda, Maryland (Dictated by Dr...
...The office of surgeon general has been described as a "bully pulpit" which I wish you would have used more force40 The American Spectator January 1994 fully in defense of life...
...Why do you judge what you think I do without knowing anything about it...
...Clinton's side as her husband addressed a joint session of Congress on national television is being used powerfully by this administration to suggest your support for this plan's central features or, at worst, only tepid opposition...
...Whatever misgivings you may intend to express behind closed doors will be far less effective than your public expression of principled opposition...
Vol. 27 • January 1994 • No. 1
