Norma Goldberger, onetime owner of an abortion facility, wrote about one of the abortionists her abortion center employed. Every time he did an abortion, he made a strange and inappropriate “joke.” Goldberger says:
He was from India and was unpretentious, friendly and low key. He always whispered to us after each abortion, “Another American who didn’t make it.” Initially we thought it was in poor taste. After a while, we just got used to the “joke.” (1)
One is reminded of the jokes Holocaust survivor and pro-choicer Magda Denes made with abortion workers in her book In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital. Denes had spent several days interviewing abortion workers, watching abortions, and looking at the bodies of aborted babies when she found herself sitting with clinic workers eating lunch. She says:
… Several of us sit in the cafeteria around a luncheon table, eating overdone, tasteless stew. “What do you think this is made of?” Someone asks. “Venison,” I say. “Pigeon,” says Betsy. “Don’t be silly,” says one of the counselors “there is a hell of a lot cheaper meat to be found around here.” All of us laugh, guffaw, splutter, and slap each other on the arms. It is the funniest thing we have heard in years…
“Get a hold of yourself, ladies,” Rachel says. “This is unseemly.” She is right, of course, but all of us laugh again.
“I think it’s a Greek dish,” says Teresa, laughing so hard that tears begin to roll down her face and we can barely understand her. “It’s fetustu.” There is no containing any of us now. “There is mincemeat pie for dessert,” someone shouts. “And that isn’t tomato juice you’re drinking,” adds somebody else. Most of us are doubled over. The air is filled with the shrieks, and gasps, and gurgles. My sides begin to ache.
Even though elsewhere Denes writes about being filled with sadness over the sight of aborted babies discarded in buckets, she throws aside the gloom to make disgusting jokes with the abortion workers.
Abby Johnson once wrote about how her abortion center manager joked about late-term abortion:
I remember one day at Planned Parenthood we were standing around in the POC lab talking about how far along Warren Hern performed abortions (he performs them up until the date of birth in Colorado). I remember my boss laughing and saying, “He aborts them so far along they come out crying and looking for their mama.” Everyone in the room laughed as she made the motion of holding a baby up and spanking it’s bottom.
One could probably find more examples. This type of “gallows humor” can be found in many high-stress jobs that deal with life and death. It might be possible to find surgeons or emergency room nurses that make similar jokes. Abortion, though, is killing, not healing. And there is something deeply disturbing about an abortionist who laughs after each abortion in which he has just killed another person.
1, Norma Goldberger Abortion Confidential: Secrets of an Abortion Clinic Owner (CreateSpace , November 23, 2014) Kindle Edition
