The Seedy Side of Life

It’s a benign curiosity of mine to ask new employees who begin working with a special needs developmentally disabled population their previous job experiences. Working with some of the most fragile human beings alive often takes a special person and it’s difficult to deny that where people have been helped shaped who they are.

Selena, where did you work before this?

Do you really want to know?

Absolutely. I ask this question all the time. Don't mind me.

…An abortion clinic.

Did the clinic operate under the euphemism of a Women’s Center?

Guilty as charged.

No, I’m not passing judgment just trying to understand what I don’t know a lot about. What did you do for the lovely folks at the Women’s Center?

Abortions. I assisted killing babies. Do you feel me?

Selena began a detailed explanation of abortions. I could not believe the nonchalant graphic detail she provided with no emotional attachment to somebody she barely knew. My eyes pinched closed. I started to only hear certain words....

The day often starts by running by screaming protesters. I got hot coffee and donuts in my hands and these picketers are shaking their signs and cussing at you. I just wanted to do my job. So you get into your scrubs and oh, they recommend wearing a surgical mask so you cannot be recognized in public. About 9am the pregnant strippers and the traumatized knocked up teenagers come in for their abortions. Mother gets needles for pain relief, what’s unwanted inside her gets a needle to stop the heartbeat. That’s when it gets messy. You know the further along in the pregnancy the bigger the instruments gets. By five months, it takes real effort for the doctor to get it all out. Lot of blood, do you feel me? Afterwards, they seal them in transparent jars, add liquid preservatives and a label marking the age of the term. It reminded me of pickling minus the UPC code. Not everything goes in a jar. The afterbirth and goop gets sealed in medical waste bags. A guy pulls up in his truck once a week, like a trash man only different. He picks up a week’s worth of abortions and brings in the sterilized recycled jars. I was responsible for confirming the fetuses or whatever you want to call them were absolutely dead long before the actual pickup day. Check this out. Some of the babies look like they died in pain by their frozen in fear expressions. Their tiny hands used to freak me out, do you feel me? The older ones are tougher to kill. The doctor has to break their necks on the extraction.

Stop! I had enough.

You look white as a ghost. I guess you get the seedy side of abortion. Worst job I ever had, do you feel me? I got fired for telling a mother the dead baby looked just liked her. Just a job, I tell myself. So what. I work with the handicapped now. I don’t even list that job on my professional resume, do you feel me?

I don’t feel anything. I think I’m numb.

I am not sure when life begins but I shed sorrow about how it ended.