This is a great piece- A CHILDHOOD IN THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT

[DemocratSinceBirth]

The alphabet had been radicalized; it marched for me now. The words, in their order, marched. This meant that I knew how to read. This meant that I could read the signs. They said “ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART” and “IT’S A CHILD, NOT A CHOICE.” Some of the signs had pictures on them, too, always the same picture, a picture of a fetus turned to the side with its thumb touching its lips and a human rope floating out of its belly and a pulse of black omniscience for an eye. The fetus was the suffused red, lit-up color you saw behind your eyelids, or when you put your hand over a flashlight. But I did not say fetus, I was told never to say that; they had told me to call it a baby.

It was morning, and we had set up camp on the sidewalks all around the clinic. If you looked at the sidewalks closely, you could see flecks of quartz and mica, and sometimes two names inside a heart, and if you paid attention you often found a penny. I was a master at finding pennies, because I was always looking down. We sat on folding chairs and rummaged in a cooler for cold drinks and fanned our faces, probably with the literature. My mother told me to stay close and not wander. I was not the kind to wander anyway, not into this kind of a crowd, which had a strong, thrumming bloodstream that might carry you off. It was not like any crowd I had met before. The energy was high, but it felt like the distinct opposite of a parade. We were waiting for something to happen, but I couldn’t tell what. Ribbons of people moved through and among us with greater purpose, but I couldn’t tell where they were going. My father was here, too, but I couldn’t see him.

“Why are we here?” I asked my mother, as children sometimes will when they need to get the story going. She hesitated. “Because these people kill babies,” she said. The sentence was full of determination, as if she had made the decision to be open with me, to speak to me as an adult. I felt the shock of cold water. I said, “White babies?” because there was a book in one of our bookcases that told how babies were thrown off the sides of ships on their way over from Africa, and I must have been able to read, because I had read that.


http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-childhood-in-the-pro-life-movement

[hedda_foil]

1. Wow!