"it bothered me ... the first time"

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 30, 2004

Dom points us to a collection of chilling quotes from abortion providers, talking about their craft.

"...it looks like a baby, That's what it looks like to me. You've never seen anything else that looks like that. The only other thing you've ever seen is a baby ... You can see a face and hands, and ears and eyes and, you know ... feet and toes ... It bothered me real bad the first time..."

Presumably she got over it.

"When I put my hands on somebody to feel how big they are and I get kicked, I am barely able to talk at that moment."

Entirely understandable. It's worth our while in this connection to revisit Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, which wrestles with the problem of how very ordinary people can be persuaded to do very wicked things. Here she is speaking of the Nazi military who worked in the death camps:

Hence the problem was to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler -- who apparently was rather strongly afflicted with these instinctive reactions himself -- was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!