Dealing—Poorly—with the Stigma of Working in the Abortion Industry
By Dave Andrusko
Some things never change because they are part of the human condition. And that holds true even for the most inhuman of behaviors–or perhaps especially so–because those actions so cut against the grain of our deepest instincts.
We’re re-posting the revealing quotes Sarah Terzo extracted from a post on a pro-abortion blog. (See “’Abortioneer’ talks about stigma of working in an abortion clinic”)
The title of the piece was “Working 9-5: How We Talk (or Don’t) about Abortion, subtitled “The ins and outs and ups and downs of direct service in the field of abortion care.” It is enormously helpful in understanding the toil exacted from people who work in the abortion industry.
When the author wrote the piece, likely in the back of her mind was the apprehension that someone like me would comment on her ambivalence bordering on depression at working at an abortion clinic. But she had to get it out, especially about the isolation best captured, perhaps, in her comment that “Only recently have I been able to have conversations with my dad about abortion after years of bitter silence.”
And if you do normal “mommy things” (as she described it) with the mother of your son’s best friend—whom you like—you are loath to come right out and admit that killing is what you do for a living, in case the mother is one of those you-know-who.
One of the very first pieces I ever read about the bottled up turmoil of those who worked in the abortion trade was a piece that appeared in the American Medical News July 12, 1993: “Abortion providers share inner conflicts.”
The story drew on discussions at workshops sponsored by the National Abortion Federation. Over the years I have re-read it several times. Here are the operative three paragraphs that catch the core of their “inner conflicts”:
“The notion that the nurses, doctors, counselors and others who work in the abortion field have qualms about the work they do is a well-kept secret.
“But among themselves—at work, or at meetings
with other providers—they talk about how they really feel. About women
who come in for ‘repeat’ abortions. About women whose reasons for having
abortions aren’t ones they consider valid. About their anger toward
women who wait until late in their pregnancies to have elective
abortions. And about the feelings they have toward the fetus, especially
as gestational age increases.
“They wonder if the fetus feels pain.
They talk about the soul and where it goes. And about their dreams, in
which aborted fetuses stare at them with ancient eyes and perfectly
shaped hands and feet, asking, ‘Why? Why did you do this to me?’”
To return to “Working 9-5: How We Talk (or Don’t) about Abortion,”
the author finishes her pep talk/justification by telling us she can
live with the protestors and the unappreciative boss and the inability
to freely talk about her job. She sticks around because she is
“committed to something larger (the ‘work’).” She feels “like I’m making
a difference in someone’s life … and I’m motivated by that.”Wouldn’t it be wonderful—and much easier on her psyche—if she found motivation not by lethally choosing sides, but because she had found a way to make a positive difference in both lives, the mother’s and her unborn child’s?
Likely? No. But it has happened before and it will inevitably happen again
Source: NRLC News
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