Pearle stormed out of the room as soon as class was dismissed, barely taking time to zip her coat and put on her hat and mittens. Other teachers had made comments that bothered her but this one made her mad. She felt like a fish out of water in this school, all alone in the midst of a sea of humanity. “I really need to find other Christians here so I don’t feel so alone,” she thought to herself as she headed down the hall. Pearle couldn’t walk fast enough to get out of the building. Bracing against the bitter February cold, her cheeks burned as her heart pounded with a mixture of embarrassment and anger.
Once inside the familiar surroundings of her car, tears filled the brims of her eyes. She took a deep breath and blew out slowly, allowing her mind to catch up with her bulging emotions. “How could he say that?” Pearle thought, as she pushed the key into the ignition. “His comments were so one sided. An instructor shouldn’t be pushing one position without balancing the issue.” She backed the car out of the parking spot and headed for home. “I feel so dumb,” she thought to herself.
Pearle hated how quiet she was. Why was it so hard for her to say what’s on her mind? Normal people talk just fine; some even make the conversation funny, even if they are totally disagreeing. She wished she had the ability to communicate more effectively; no, she wished she had the ability to communicate, period. It seemed no matter what was going on, she held her tongue. How had she gotten this way? She was only recently beginning to recognize her own ideas instead of copying whatever others thought.
“At least I tried to speak up with my one comment about the millions of children who have been killed,” she thought. “I shut down so quickly, at the slightest hint of an argument.” She felt embarrassed remembering the one comment made in response to hers. Fear had gripped her and held her tongue hostage. She wanted so badly to be able to feel comfortable saying what was on her mind. “Why do I feel I don’t have a right to my opinion?” she wondered.
“The only thing he said was how it protected women from all the botched abortions that used to happen. Well, news for him, abortions are still botched; His one plus is not even true. How can anyone even think abortion is ok?” she thought.
Pulling onto the freeway, the seriousness of the topic emerged from hiding somewhere deep within her. “Seriously? Killing babies? That’s ok?” she screamed out loud. “He should have mentioned the barbaric way it’s done… cutting them apart, then sucking out their body parts one by one with a vacuum! Oh, but we wouldn’t want the woman to be inconvenienced by having a baby. Let’s just get rid of it. Well, how about not getting pregnant in the first place! They should think about the consequences before they have sex. What do they expect?” she raged to herself.
“I can’t believe anyone in his right mind would think abortion is right, let alone good. Good for whom? The mother? That woman will have to live with her decision for the rest of her life. The conscience of our whole country has been iced over because of abortions.” Pearle’s thoughts flowed freely when no one was around to critique her.
“Why can’t I think like this when I’m in the midst of a conversation?” she wondered. “I just sat there. I can come up with all this good information here in my car while I’m driving home, but do you think I’d be able to say anything then? Probably couldn’t have even come up with my own name if asked,” she thought to herself. “My brain just freezes, totally blank when I’m under stress. I know there’s a lot inside my head that could come out, but all I do is sit there and stare forward like a zombie. It does me no good to rant and rave now. Who can hear me?” She thought of all the conversations that never happened.
“It hurts inside to always be quiet,” Pearle thought. “And keeping my thoughts to myself does no one any good, especially me.” She wondered what would happen if she wrote down her thoughts so next time she’d be better prepared to speak up if she had an opinion about something.
Pearle pulled the car into the garage, grabbed her school bag and headed inside. After having something to eat, she settled herself into the sofa with her computer and began typing away. “…….women still become seriously ill, infertile, and even die due to our sophisticated abortion practices. . . . crushing their skull, breaking their fragile spine . . . ” That was enough. She knew she had to somehow bring the whole truth to bear upon the mind of at least this one teacher.
She continued her litany. “He could have mentioned how they let some of the babies die a slow agonizing death by being burned alive while they drink deadly poison. Some of these poor beings are still alive when they are miscarried 24 hours later. Then, they are left unattended to die, all alone. How is that good? Or, how about the caesarian abortion where the umbilical chord is cut while the baby is still in the womb, causing the baby to suffocate to death? Sometimes, these babies are delivered alive, too, and left to die on some cold shelf. Oh, then there’s the very barbaric method where a baby is delivered legs first and just before the head comes out, the good doctor inserts scissors into the skull so a suction tube can be put in to suck the baby’s brains out. You could make a horror movie if it wasn’t so tragically real.”
“The only ‘good’ thing that has come out of abortion, if anyone can say anything good can come from mass murder, is that the crime rate has gone way down. What would you expect since most of the abortions take place from women who are in the lower income brackets; same place most criminals come from. I would say that a whole generation has been reduced, but now it is more like two generations. Over 56 million people have been killed in the United States alone since 1972. These are people who would be up to 40 years old today if they had been allowed to live.”
Once she had written down these facts, she felt sick to be part of a culture that killed their own children, and she truly wondered how anyone could even remotely consider such practices a good thing. But wasn’t she contributing in her own way by being a silent bystander?