Rachel M. MacNair wrote a book on the stress individuals deal with when they regularly commit violent acts. Her book discusses the experience of soldiers during wartime, and it also has a chapter on abortion. She recounts hearing about one abortionist’s bizarre behavior, which she attributes to work-related stress.
In a telephone conversation, a woman who worked for a doctor in Louisiana for a few months recounted an incident:
“The one thing that sticks out in my mind the most, that really upset me the most, was that he had done an abortion, he had a fetus wrapped inside of a blue paper. He stuck it inside of a surgical glove and put another glove over it. He was standing in the hall, speaking with myself and two of his assistants. He was tossing the fetus up in the air and catching it. Like it was a rubber ball. I just looked at him and it’s like doctor, please. And he laughed. He says, “Nobody knows what this is.”
Rachel M. Macnair, Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002)
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