Megan Nichols
Baumgartner
English Composition 101
26 February 2007

The Seventh Grade Crusade

Our collared shirts were grudgingly tucked in. The boys' belts wrapped themselves firmly around the waists of khaki colored slacks in order to prevent the ever popular "sagging" phenomenon of the late 1990s, and the girls' pressed pleated skirts were rolled up at the waist to show just a little more leg. Every morning we listened with our utmost attention, while passing notes and throwing chewing gum, to the prayer over the intercom. We recited the pledge of allegiance, of course including in our monotonous mumbles the infamous line: "One nation under God." And every afternoon we recited the Our Father, having no idea what the "Forgive those who trespass against us …" clause actually implored us to do. We were young, impressionable, products of the Catholic school system.

During our weekly morning Mass, we slouched in the firmly cushioned pews, our minds solely focused on finding a way to copy our religion homework before lunch. Our relationship with religion class tended to fluctuate between an utter loathing and a compulsory acceptance. In one breath we gave thanks for the elementary nature of the homework that simply required us to write "Jesus is my savior and my friend", as well as the occasional afternoon meditations. Our teachers believed we enjoyed these exercises because they strengthened our spirituality, but we were just excited to lie on the floor in close proximity to the opposite sex. The majority of our breaths, however, concerning religion class were long, droning sighs. Our hearts filled with a deep antipathy for the complexities of Trinity and the concept of a divine and human savior. We abhorred prolonged lectures about our sacrificial obligations, our sin-plagued souls, and the inevitable guilt we were all doomed to be wrought with every Good Friday.

Eventually, the school must have caught wind that we were not enjoying our religion class, and so the administration decided to invite in two special speakers to save our souls and get us back on the path to salvation, or at least in the realm of devout Catholicism. So on a clear October morning, Mrs. Jean Hawthorne and Mrs. Anne Thompson strolled into our 7th grade classroom to inspire us with their religious insights and teach us about one of God's greatest enemies.

We all knew these women. Mrs. Thompson was one of the few things that inspired us to pray at this age. Every time there was a class field trip, we offered everything up to God in hopes that he would not punish us for our sins by placing us in her Chrysler mini-van, where the only radio stations allowed were Spirit 105.3 and Radio Disney. Mrs. Hawthorne, on the other hand, did not cause us to pray; but rather to shudder in her presence. For we knew that if we were seen with our skirts rolled too high, our pants sagged, or with a giddy face around a member of the opposite sex, our parents would soon be receiving a phone call from Mrs. Hawthorne about her concern for the purity our soul. We had been instructed to treat these women with the utmost respect, as they were visitors taking time out of their very hectic schedules (they co-lead the Parent's Scrap booking Club, which surely was very strenuous and mind boggling work) to bestow upon us their spiritual and scholarly wisdom. We were ready to give them the typical junior high treatment, filled with a superb combination of jaded, indifferent faces and regular interrupting chit chat, but these two women knew us too well, and they had come prepared.

Our special visitors began our religious salvation by slapping down a dark iridescent sheet on the overhead projector.

"Does any one know what this is?"

It looked like a box. We all thought it looked like a box, but who was going to give these two women the satisfaction of falling for some apparent trick?

Mrs. Thompson continued, "This is a dumpster."

Oohhhh, religion and pollution. We all slipped lazily back into our chairs to prepare to be informed for a solid hour about how we needed to protect Jesus' earth.

"You may be thinking this is some ordinary dumpster, but it is not. This is a dumpster where people in this country throw out murdered babies."

Mrs. Thompson's mouth dramatically slowed as she hissed the word "murdered", and Mrs. Hawthorne nodded violently to show her similar sentiment.

Confusion and naivety impeded our minds from grasping what our lesson was going to be about. Underfed children? Gang warfare? Some even toyed with the idea that the dumpster was filled with children whose mothers' chose not to baptize them. Internally we secretly and rapidly searched our minds for what this introductory grabber could be leading to, but externally nodded in agreement, not wanting to let on to our peers that we had been put in the dark by women we did not consider intelligent in the slightest.

The class continued with the passing out of a personal folder for each of us. Inside laid pamphlets, flyers, and sheets of statistics. Some argued the fact that fetuses are alive at conception, including a daily chart that indicated when a baby's heart forms, and when its eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and even toes begin to develop. Others had mastered the art of discrediting all organizations and doctors that supported abortion, but the most divisive flyers were those that depicted the exact medical procedures, including photographs, that were used to perform an abortion.

The girls grew teary eyed and while the boys remained stoic. Not one of us cracked a joke, for we all were in disbelief that this evil was happening, how any woman could ever choose such a sinful path. Most of us were still a little confused about how a baby actually got to the point of being conceived, but in this moment that didn't seem to matter. The guest speakers were ready to move on, and despite our already apparent emotional disturbance, they decided to conclude by leaving us with one last heart-wrenching thought.

"I'd like all of you to consider this," Mrs. Thomson began slowly, her mouth again dripping slowly over her words in such a way that we could not resist sitting on the edge of our seats. "Every 60 minutes 110 babies are aborted around the world. That means that during the time span of this class period, all of you, as well of your families, could have been aborted if your mother had chosen to abandon you."

We had felt emotional before, but this escalated our distress on a much more personal level. The guilt from our prior naivety about the situation was enough to convince us that we had to change; we had to fight this utterly evil practice! And so, in the midst of our angst and emotion, we were not once encouraged to think of forgiveness or an ever loving God, but to take arms and fight against the corrupt and sinful people that murdered vulnerable unborn children.

Mrs. Hawthorne and Mrs. Thompson clearly had been prepared for this reaction, and so before their departure they presented us with a task: to write a poem, essay, or short story illustrating the sinfulness of abortion. The best work in the class would be recognized in front of entire junior high. We only had three days to complete the task, for as Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Hawthorne reminded us on their way out the door, every second we waited more and more murderers were taking away the lives of babies.

And so the crusade began. We, the 7^th grade class at St. Bernadette's, would fulfill our duty as loyal Catholics and disciples at the age of 13 by helping rid the world of baby killers. This anti-abortion fervor became as trendy as Pokemon and Britney Spears. We pinned little emblems of babies' feet to our backpacks, we wept as we prayed intentions daily for the unborn children of the world, and we heatedly discussed our contempt for those women who chose to desert their helpless unborn children.

Our hands danced across the keyboard in a display of vigor and energy much more eccentric than our usual commitment to writing assignments. If we could just blend the perfect rhythm and rhyme into each verse, and weave in the scholarly and emotionally touching vocabulary, each of us believed we would surely win the writing contest. We imagined not only receiving praise for our brilliant prose, but also fantasized about being hailed as a prodigy of faith, a young girl or boy who single-handedly took down the evil empire of abortion using the pen rather than the sword. We envisioned being interviewed by Oprah and the Pope canonizing us as the youngest American saint.

As we finished our masterful works, we dashed to the dinner table, office, laundry room, or pantry to eagerly beg our parents to read what we had so beautifully constructed for our crusade. Although I'm sure many parents were proud and supportive of what their children composed, this was the only time my mother was not swollen with pride over something I had written and the did not praise my efforts as a writer. She merely read my three page poem, looked up at me, and said with a hint of absence in her voice, "This is different than what I expected, Megan," and left the room.

For the weeks following I was shocked and embarrassed by my mother's defiance of our crusade. How could she choose not to rise up and combat abortion? Did she support unholy institutions like Planned Parenthood that drove young women down the abortion path? Was my mother going to hell for this? Although I never have asked my mother to explain her reaction to my poem, I believe that no matter what her views on abortion may be, that day my mother saw a problem with the class lecture that I failed to see for several years to come.

We were young and impressionable. We hadn't even been taught the differences between the male and female reproductive organs—our sex-ed materials were sent home every year so our parents could awkwardly explain the orgasm and the penis. Eighty percent of the girls hadn't had their first period. Yet here we were, drafting poems, essays, drawing pictures, making posters, some even coming up with song lyrics about the inherent evil and satanic qualities of something we really knew very little about. We had been made afraid through the gruesome pictures and descriptions, and our fear was played upon. Our crusade was not one rooted in deep beliefs or valid religious convictions, but rather it was sprung from naïve minds who had never heard both sides of a story. Our crusade was discredited by the simple fact that we never stopped to check our spelling, we never stopped to take a breath and read what we had written. We never stopped to question what we had heard, and we never stopped to think, because we weren't advised to.