She was a coworker of mine. She was very active in the anti abortion movement. She was living with her fiance and helping to support the two of them while he was in college preparing to go on for a law degree.

She knew that I am pro choice, so she took me aside one day and asked if I knew of a clinic where she could get an abortion. I was stunned and asked her why she would do that when she was anti choice. She said that having a baby at that point in their lives would destroy their future. She said that she still opposed abortion, but that theirs was an exceptional case. Claimed that she was "not like those other women who are irresponsible and promiscuous." She was responsible, had future plans that she and her fiance were working hard to carry out, and that she used birth control but it had failed her.

I knew that there was no place in our small city that would do an abortion, although it was legal, and suggested that she look into another city.

She did get her abortion, told me that she felt so relieved, but continued her anti abirtion work.

I could not understand her hypocrisy.

. . . and my involvement in Campus Life Youth For Christ when one of my acquaintances from that group confided to me that she "didn't have an abortion, just an injection that caused her to miscarry". The person who helped her pay for her procedure was one of the Campus Life group leaders whose underage girlfriend had had two abortions.

I heard through the grape-vine (and I admit that it might not be true) that my acquaintance took up her Christian duty on the Planned Parenthood picket line years later.

So, I can't fathom the hypocrisy, either. As I am no longer a believer, at least I don't have to stare it in the face on a regular basis.

It was not part of my religious background because I grew up in a theologically liberal Lutheran church and we had our own youth group that met on Sunday evenings. But I had a friend in high school whose father was a Baptist minister and she invited me to go to a YFC meeting with another girl that we knew who belonged to an Assembly of God church.

So I went to a couple of meetings with them on weekends when I didn't have other plans (a date or plans with other friends for the local teen dance held each weekend). They were deeply disappointed that I did not respond to the altar call. After a couple meetings, I declined future invitations from them.

During student teaching in college, my supervising teacher told me that she'd had an abortion before they were legal. She said, "What else could I do? I wasn't married and I was a good Catholic girl so I couldn't tell anyone that I was pregnant."

Say what??? Good Catholic girls get abortions? I was not opposed to the fact that she'd done it. Just could not wrap my head around her reasoning. She was a Spanish teacher and had lived in Spain for a year as an exchange student in college during the period when Franco was dictator of Spain. She praised his strict moral laws that made it illegal for girls and women to show their knees in dresses, wear shorts, or two piece bathing suits. Yet in her classroom, she wore very tightly knit, low cut tops and helped her students put Valentine cutouts on their bulletin board that had explicit sexual performance messages.

And she was anti abortion.

The dissonance was head splitting for me.

They try to block the parking lot entrances, and practically throw themselves on the hoods of patient's cars to divert them. Maybe harassing women for god gives them a sexualized thrill.