I wrote the following several years ago. I was a cabbie in Milwaukee for a little under a year as I worked my way back into the IT industry. During that time I had many interesting experiences. Some were great, awful, scary, and fascinating. Here is one such experience.
It was a typical spring day. About 11, a fare pops up on my monotone 5-line receiver. I’m logged into zone 10, which includes everything to the north and east of the Milwaukee River to just north of Brady Street. Here you will find the US Bank Tower, the revitalized 3rd Ward, an assortment of Elderly facilities, the Italian Community Center, the Summerfest Grounds, and the abortion clinic. This was my one and only trip to the abortion clinic.
I drop under the 794, turn on Broadway, and then take a right on Jackson Street. It’s a brick building with a security camera hanging on the edge of the building. At this point, it is still just an address. An older black lady escorts an at most 20-something out of the building and into my cab. I confirm where they are going, getting the information for Transit Plus, a program that subsidizes taxi rides for the disabled.
The young lady doesn’t have much to say, and when she does she sounds drunk. Her eyes are glazed over and look drugged. At this point, the dots are connected in my head. This young lady has had an abortion. The older lady, presumably the mom, aunt, or grandmother is a little more talkative. One of the joys of being a cabbie is talking. We would be talking for a while, because we were heading to the northwest side of the city.
You would think that the first thought that crossed my mind was “this girl murdered her child.” It wasn’t. I suppose I could have been angry with the other woman for letting this girl do this. She at least could speak intelligibly, but at the same time, she wasn’t exactly jubilant. She was more resigned as in the feeling you get when a burden has been taken from your shoulder or when you’ve accomplished a difficult task. My emotion was gut-wrenching sickness. I was disgusted.
I’ve been through surgery for a broken leg. I know what it is like to be drugged. This young girl wasn’t like that. She was so heavily drugged that nothing in the outside world could have been apparent to her. Now I’m certain that there is some physical pain with an abortion, but this drugging was to take someone out of this world. The thought crossed my mind, “Everyone involved in this knows that this is wrong. The only way to see it through the end of the day is to be so drugged that you remove your conscience, so that you needn’t contemplate the unconscionable.”
So, I am driving this couple. I go up the Stadium Freeway, turn on Lisbon, and then 60th Street. Finally, after what seems to be an eternity I turn on to the street where we will part. (I’m intentionally leaving the specific location ambiguous. [Today, I could probably still find the place.]) I pull up alongside the curb. I begin taking my money, and then the young lady opens the car door and throws up. She doesn’t look any better for having done that. Reorganizing herself, she gets out with her companion, and they leave my life.
This is what compassion is. Compassion is to lead a mother to destroy an innocent life, drug her up, and turn her back to the world. This ‘right’ is so important that two lives are thrown to the gutter. Abortion has nothing to do with helping the mother. The mother is just a pawn in a sick game. Supposedly it is inhumane to place a child with a mother who can’t care for him. I say it is inhumane to pretend that the mother is a joyful participant exercising her rights.
In the end, abortion is about breeding. It is about breeding without consequence. A rich woman can do it outside of marriage and live off child support. The poor woman is faced with a mortgage sized obligation, or a $1000 fix if the abortion is not fully subsidized. There is a term for this, mercy killing. Often the poor are called to be mercenaries. What are they fighting for? In some case they are fighting for the right of breeding without consequence. More often they are fighting for the antiquated belief that the poor create more poor people. This is similar to the logic that dung piles create flies, but it persists to this day. Make no mistake, there is no compassion here. There was no government program at the end of the rainbow to lift this woman out of poverty. There was no training awaiting. People were quite content that this woman be in poverty. The only thing society asked was that she not bring another child into this world.
Whatever abortion is, abortion is not humane.
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