Vacant Souls

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

[This column is a continuation in our current series on abortion providers.]

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The life of an abortionist is a living hell.

 Frederick Douglass wrote about his life as a slave and his master’s bizarre behavior. “The slave holder, as well as the slave, was the victim of the slave system,” he wrote. His master would “walk alone…muttering to himself, and he occasionally stormed about as if defying an army of invisible foes. Most of his leisure was spent in walking around, cursing and gesticulating as if possessed by a demon. He was evidently a wretched man, at war with his own soul and all the world around him” (The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; New Jersey, Citadel Press, 1983).

Our experience with abortionists is that they display the same signs of how stress never meant for the human person warps their personalities beyond anything normal. Indeed, the symptoms of “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)” are everywhere to be seen in the abortionist. Simply put, when we experience a trauma beyond the range of ordinary human experience, our normal perception of reality and ability to function are impaired. The trauma involves a real or perceived threat to the life or bodily integrity of oneself or someone else. The symptoms of PTSD are seen in soldiers returning from war, and also in “post-abortion syndrome.” Yet the person who performed the procedure has likewise come into contact with a traumatic and violent death – and also pays the price

The abortionist has it harder than the soldier. In the soldier’s case, he is defending himself and others from an attacker. Yet the abortionist knows the baby is no such attacker. Moreover, the soldier has a support system and camaraderie of which the abortionist can only dream. Abortionists are isolated and shunned by society, the medical profession, and even pro-choice groups. Diane Derzis, a clinic administrator I know personally, confided to an Atlanta newspaper, “There’s still the shame thing, even among people who are pro-choice…We are still seen as dirty, even among our own people” (June/July 1995 taped phone conversations.) A survey of 961 abortionists which we possess at Priests for Life found that 69% of them felt they were not respected by the rest of the medical community.

This and many related factors lead to behavior like the former employee of a Louisiana abortion clinic relates in saying that the abortionist “had a fetus wrapped inside of blue paper….He was standing in the hall…tossing the fetus up in the air and catching it. Like it was a rubber ball.” Joy Davis, whom I also know personally, speaks in a 1993 interview with Life Dynamics about an abortionist she worked for. “I would come into the office some time in the morning and …find him lying on the floor, totally nude, lying in a pool of vomit, where he had been on drugs all night.”

If you think this is bad, it barely scratches the surface. Contact Priests for Life and ask for the book “Lime 5” if you think you can bear learning more about the vacant souls of abortionists.