In the late 1970s, freshly off the boat of communist misery, I got my first job, assistant to an accountant. I had no idea what accounting was, but I was willing to learn, and was really good at everything math, thanks to my excellent communist education that, aside from Marxist indoctrination, made sure that I learned calculus, algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and statistics. No bizarre common core math. Language and the ability to write a complete sentence with flowery adjectives and descriptive adverbs would come in handy when trying to write a defensive letter to the IRS, excusing a client who had to pay a hefty fine.
My second job was bookkeeper and secretary for a pathologist who received excised organs, limbs, tumors, tissue slides, and aborted fetuses from the area’s hospitals. That was a ghoulish, smelly, and nauseating job. I knew I could learn a lot if I could get past my personal beliefs, the smell of preserved flesh, and the lugubrious laughter of the pathologist with his bushy eyebrows and a deep voice that sent shivers down my spine every time he ordered his lab assistant to go to the basement and retrieve a certain specimen floating in formaldehyde. His collection went back decades and only certain people were privy to its contents. Newbies were always frightened and most did not stay very long.
I was responsible for billing hospitals for pathological examinations and diagnoses of various specimens. Every Wednesday the boss ordered pizza for everyone and we had to learn to eat around human body parts and slides with microscopic tissue samples without throwing up. It was not difficult when I got pregnant because I was throwing up anyway. I learned to take my lunch outside and tried to eat in the fresh air. It was impossible to neutralize the smell of flesh and formaldehyde that lingered in my nostrils.
What was the most difficult to stomach, aside from handling dangerous and potentially infectious parts and tissue, were the fully-formed fetuses that had been killed and dismembered during abortion procedures. Life created by God was disposed of by incineration just like any diseased body parts that had been removed during surgery, studied under a microscope, and a diagnosis established.
When I eventually left, a few months later, I was emotionally exhausted from crying for all the babies that never got a chance to live and grow to adulthood. I kept an electric candle on my desk all the time. I questioned what gave them the right to take someone’s life that God had created, in the name of “reproductive health.” If one is really interested in reproductive well-being, there are thousands of OBGYNs who specialize in women’s reproductive health.
I felt the same wave of nausea and threw up in my mouth when I watched the recently surfaced Planned Parenthood video with the young doctor, stuffing her face with salad and drinking red wine, talking glibly about harvesting baby body parts more efficiently without crushing the “calvarium,” the baby’s skull, as if she was talking about chopping up ingredients for a new dish she was cooking. She seemed like a soulless cross between Margaret Sanger and Josef Mengele.
Margaret Sanger (1883-1966), a eugenicist and alleged founder of Planned Parenthood, editor of Birth Control Review (1917-1938) was an early pioneer in “reproductive health.” She dedicated her life to birth control and eugenics issues.
Dr. Josef Mengele was infamous for his twisted and ghoulish experiments. His brutal “medical research” was allowed to go on undisturbed in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Sadly, this monster was never brought to justice. He and other masterminds of the Holocaust, the genocide of Jews, gays, priests, and gypsies, were found to be psychologically normal, men of good standing in Nazi society.
Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” tortured human beings and performed “experiments” of unspeakable and macabre horror. He injected adults and children with toxic drugs and lethal germs, put them into pressure chambers, castrated them, froze them to death, gassed an entire wing of 750 women for having lice, performed experimental surgery without anesthesia, made direct blood transfusions between twins, sex change operations, injections with chemicals to change eye color, and removal of organs and limbs.
I do not understand progressives who accuse everyone of racism and hate crimes yet they place no value on human life and remain heartless to the plight of millions of babies aborted since Roe v. Wade, calling abortion a “choice.” Aside from instances when a mother’s life is in danger, is it really a “choice” or is it ending the life of a human being that wants to live?
choice is another name for murder. the gruesomeness of this procedure is repugnant to humans and ones with a soul and feelings. all doctors are not butchers as one pathologist told me. many of us doctors don’t believe in abortion. he explained they reviewed all abortions and if they all agreed that patient was selling parts would tell them to go to another hospital. i guess that’s why he was fired- and from a catholic hospital. and yes the world has gone mad! ileana always a pleasure to read your articles.
Thank you, John Simmons.