Baby Murderers

'Baby murderers-we all are' was said
In threat, irony and in self-disgust.
The vultures slunk away. What could they make
Of ten women drinking furiously
While only picking at food rich in price?
Some fun, all expenses paid? Not likely.
 
Girls night out and me, the sober chauffeur,
Pondering how to get these ten women
Of all shapes and sizes into my car.
 
Alcohol to bury desperation.
Not with their workshy, parasite partners
Or adult children. Or even their own
Gambling or escapist holidays.
They were quite well paid in nine to five jobs.
What most nurses would kill for. It was just
Because of what they said they were. For real
Baby murderers.
 
Not against abortion. They had sympathy
For those whose troubled lives would be wrecked
By another child. Yet each had seen
At least one aborted foetus/baby
Viably alive which they had dumped
With other clinical waste. Not that often.
But once was enough and more than that
Was unbearable. It destroyed them as women.
Those young enough failed to conceive.
All felt contaminated.
 
The surgeons rationalised more adeptly.
African and Indian their fees funded
The hospitals and clinics they created
In poor communities in their own countries.
The conveyor belt terminations they performed
In a rich country served higher purposes.
Or they moonlighted to give some meaning
To the absurdities of their main work
Such as hymen restoration.
 
The baby murderers had no such evasions.
They could, but didn't, blame pushy mothers
Insisting to GPs that their teenage daughters
Were less than twenty six week gone.
The daughters did not know and mothers
Couldn't care if their daughters ended up sterile.
And the baby murderers had another
Living foetus to dump in biowaste.
 
There were those less common kinds of murder.
Women for whom full term pregnancy would mean
Almost certain death for mother and child.
Yet they had about a fifty per cent chance
Of surviving early termination.
Surgeons and managers would not allow
The clinic's surgical death rate to rise.
To the baby murderers it fell
To console the unfortunate women.
 
Time to leave the celebration dinner
Ten women in my four plus seater
To drop throughout the city suburbs
They could not risk taxis in their state.
 
Hardly a mile before one signalled
From the floor an immediate need to puke.
All parts of the female anatomy  
Were pushed in my face in the rush
To escape impending vomit on best clothes.
 
It meant nothing to them or to me.
Murdering babies destroyed sexuality
In their eyes and, I regretted, in mine.
Those wonderful women, put upon by all,  
Had no recognition from the wider world,
Not even of their blameless self-loathing.