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Our Pro Life contact at St. Michaels: Angie Eckstein you can email her at: eckstein@dtnspeed.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today's News & Views October 7, 2003 As I indicated Monday, I'm at the printer's today putting the final touches on the October issue of National Right to Life News. (If you are not a subscriber, please call 202-626-8828.) The following sad story was written by Liz Townsend. Combine technology, with easy access to abortion, and an often discriminatory attitude toward women and you wind up with the ghastly suicide India now faces. ********************************************************** Female Abortion and Infanticide Contributes to Gender Imbalance in India The ratio between males and females in India is tilting alarmingly in favor of boys, as untold numbers of baby girls are being aborted or killed soon after birth. The traditional preference for boys, who are expected to support the parents in their old age, as opposed to girls, who cost the family a great deal of money in dowries, often leads to death when a female is conceived. "India has been trying to stop female infanticide and feticide for years," reported Jonathan Mann of CNN International. "It's outlawed selective abortions of females and the use of predictive medical procedures that make them possible. "But it hasn't changed things much. The word ultrasound is still familiar, even to the poorest villagers, and so is the lack of women." Francois Farah, who works in India, told Voice of America News that the gender ratio imbalance has been growing. "The problem of sex selection has gained increased importance, at least over the last 10 years," he said. "On the average, you have 950 to 955 girls for 1,000 boys,â€쳌 Farah explained. “This is a universal sort of level. Between 1991 and 2001 we've seen situations in some states where this sex ratio had gone down [from] 950 to 900, to 850, even to 800, and in some districts below 800." At a workshop held by the State Institute of Health and Family Welfare in May, Dr. MC Kapilashrami, director of the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare in Delhi, said that the gender imbalance will probably cause many social problems in years to come. "Kapilashrami directly attributed the fall to rampant misuse of ultrasound technology by vested interest to detect the gender of the foetus," the Times of India reported. Individual women said that they face severe familial and societal pressure to dispose of their female children. "I wanted to keep the baby, but people around me said, 'You have three daughters. Why do you want to have yet another one?'" an unidentified woman told CNN International. "'How can I kill her,' I asked. They suggested giving the baby something that would kill her. So I got some tobacco leaf, mixed it with water and gave it to the baby. She died." A gynecologist, identified as Dr. Geeta, told Voice of America News that she aborted her second child, who was a girl, since she had already given birth to one girl already. Despite her education level and professional confidence, she said she bowed to the stricture against making "a line of daughters" and to pressure from her in-laws for a grandson. After the abortion, she gave birth to a son. She now feels immense regret for aborting her baby girl. "Soon after the termination, I felt that I've got rid of it," Dr. Geeta told Voice of America News. "But after some time, I thought that, no, it was not right. I felt that I should not bother about the in-laws or anybody in the society. "Nobody can change the society. Alone, I cannot change the society. This mentality has to be changed, and it is not so easy." ****************************************************** Dave Andrusko can be reached at daveandrusko@hotmail.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today's News & Views July 17, 2003 Member of European Parliament Confers With Congressional Opponents of Cloning Often times we forget what a powerful example the United States sets for the rest of the world. Or, put another way, we tend to overlook that other nations look to the U.S. for leadership in any number of areas, including highly controversial bioethical issues. One area, near and dear to pro-lifers' hearts is cloning. On June 25, a visiting member of the European Parliament gave Americans a perspective on the human cloning debate that has been ignored for too long. Those who support using cloning to mass-produce and kill human embryos for research have long argued that banning this grotesque practice would deprive the U.S. of its leadership in biotechnology. Ban research cloning here, they have said, and our best scientists will move to Europe to pursue this promising research. But according to Dr. Peter Liese, most European nations are swiftly moving to ban human cloning for research purposes, and they can't figure out what is taking the U.S. so long. Dr. Liese is in an ideal position to know. A pediatrician and genetics researcher, he is a member of the European Parliament and chairman of that body's largest working group on bioethics. He was a leader in the recent debate that led the Parliament to propose a complete ban on human cloning throughout Europe. That proposal is now under review by the health ministers of the various countries belonging to the European Union. The current situation is complex. The French and German parliaments both favor a complete ban on cloning, but that position thus far has not been fully reflected in these nations' proposals to the United Nations in the debate on an international covenant on human cloning. Meanwhile, the U.S. delegation to the U.N. has pressed eloquently for a complete ban on human cloning, but the U.S. Senate has still not acted on the complete domestic ban favored by the President and the House of Representatives. Dr. Liese was in Washington June 24-26, primarily to speak on European developments in biotechnology at the annual convention of BIO, the Biotechnology Industry Organization of the United States. One point he made there was that many European researchers have ethical objections to human cloning for research purposes, and BIO's European counterpart has taken no position on the issue. This is in stark contrast to the position of BIO in this country, which has been a very aggressive political force in support of such cloning. But Dr. Liese also took the opportunity to discuss the issue with his counterparts in the U.S. Congress. A highlight was his impromptu press conference on the morning of June 25 with Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks.) and Congressman Dave Weldon (R-Fl.), the prime Senate and House sponsors of a federal human cloning ban in the U.S. His remarks at the gathering were both informative and pointed. Above all else Dr. Liese emphasized what a impact it would have on the international debate if the United States were to enact a complete ban on human cloning. Pro-lifers are working toward that day--night and day. Thank you, Dr. Liese, for reminding us that our great responsibility is also our great privilege. Dave Andrusko can be reached at daveandrusko@hotmail.com Help Pass Pro-Life Legislation! Use the NRLC Legislative Action Center<\b> Dave Andrusko can be reached at daveandrusko@hotmail.com From: Todays News and Views Monday, June 23, 2003 3:25 PM Subject: Rivers of Tears<\b> Rivers of Tears<\b> "Children are vitally concerned with distinguishing good from evil and truth from falsehood. This need to make moral distinctions is a gift, a grace that human beings are given at the start of their lives." "Tending the Heart of Virtue," by Vigen Guroian "There is a horrible, unspeakable moment when she feels her whole body crying out, 'Stop! Wait! Put it back! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Don't leave me, please! I didn't abandon you. I don't hate you. I don't cast you out of my family!' And she thinks she will go mad then." "The Procedure," Washington Post Magazine, April 5, 1998 As no doubt you are tired of hearing me say, the Internet really IS an incredible informational resource. When you write something that makes its way on to the Information Highway, it's like a perpetual hitchhiker, waiting for someone to come along and give it a ride. Just yesterday I received this lovely e-mail from a college student who'd run across a Today's News & Views I'd written exactly one year ago to the day. I had titled it "Rivers of Tears," and the immediate inspiration was yet another report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showing that abortions had dropped--always welcomed news. Since we have thousands of new readers, I've decided it would be useful to rerun the bulk of the column. I hope you find "Rivers of Tears" to be as useful as did my overly gracious collegiate e-mailer. ****************************************************************************************************** While this decline in the number of abortions is enormously encouraging news, if past experience is any guide, it will disappear without a bubble until the next report comes out, hopefully documenting still another decline. Don't let that abbreviated media attention span bother you. Be confident, the full flowering of all your efforts is yet to come. Invigorated by these wonderful results, we will go forth to continue to enact essential educational and legislative bulwarks. It'd be nice to think the kind of agreeable outcomes reported by the CDC would take the starch out of the Planned Parenthood types. The more likely response is even stiffer resistance from the there's-never-enough-abortion crowd. So why do we celebrate? Because many babies are alive who otherwise wouldn't be, to be sure, but also because untold numbers of mothers have been spared the spiritual desolation that so often accompanies a woman's (or girl's) decision to exterminate her own flesh and blood. Abortion's treasury of hurt, alas, is seemingly inexhaustible. Few deposits more painfully illustrate this than an unforgettably sad, heartbreaking essay that ran a few years ago. "The Procedure" is the story of her own abortion, written by R.C. Barajas for the Washington Post Magazine. While in the end she defends her decision as the right one, what we really learn is that a loving woman can make a terribly wrong decision for motives that to her seem unassailable. It is no exaggeration to say that clinging to that illusionary reassurance enables Barajas to go on. Barajas's abortion is highly "unrepresentative," in the statistical sense (she is married with children) and in the real-life sense (there is no evidence of coercion, subtle or overt). But the waves of searing pain and almost unbearable regret, the rivers of tears that seem as if they will never end, and the onrushing thought that she might go mad are utterly representative. Barajas writes her story in the third person ("she") as a literary technique. I suspect this allows her to reveal emotions that might be impossible to commit to paper written in the first person. Often Barajas tells us "she" cried. The reader will cry often as well - - out of frustration and empathy for a woman and a baby who deserved a better fate. If an avowed pro-lifer had written the first 95% of "The Procedure," she would be attacked for stereotyping, for painting the worst possible picture of an abortion clinic, and for exaggerating the agony of a woman as she prepares for and actually suffers through the abortion. The abortion clinic is a sleazy dump whose "assembly line method" (Barajas's words, not mine) makes for minimum "downtime." Women come in all morning, fill out the requisite forms, are "counseled," and then wait until the abortionist arrives in the afternoon. Moving back and forth from room to room, he will suction out dehumanized unborn children from their depersonalized mothers. (An image impossible to shake leaps to mind. These women are like automobiles at a car wash waiting to be vacuumed out.) Barajas is the mother of three young children, two of them twin boys. Indeed, we are told that her three boys "complete her." Everything in the essay suggests she is a decent, loving, caring mother. So why is she aborting this child? She fears a fourth child would "absorb" her, "deplete the precious reservoir of time she has so carefully garnered to spend with each child." Barajas "fears this with such conviction that it has brought her to this place." There is absolutely no reason to doubt this is what she sincerely believes. Yet the portrait Barajas paints so memorably is of a woman whose every fiber, every instinct, every thought screams out, "Don't!" (The most powerful example is the quote at the top of this column.) The nurse/counselor knows it. It's her job to get around a woman's innate need to protect her child. To numb Barajas (and every other woman), the nurse/counselor labels the abortion "the Procedure." "It's a better word than some, and right now words have become terribly important to her," Barajas writes. "She finds herself searching almost obsessively for the right words to say and think." Why? "Doesn't want things to come back and haunt her." Just how powerfully she knows that she shouldn't be there comes through in passage after revealing passage. When the nurse takes a drop of blood to test for anemia, Barajas's heart is pounding so, "she is amazed the blood doesn't spurt across the room." With 45 minutes to kill before the abortion, Barajas and her husband go to a book store. As they're about to leave, she writes, her "heart [is] in her throat as she thinks on what they must return to in a few minutes." Later, when they call the woman just ahead of Barajas, "Her heart leaps out of her chest and she wants to run, but before she can, her name is called." If this weren't awful enough, as she waits for the abortionist she hears the sound of the abortion machine through the thin walls. "It sounds exactly like an industrial vacuum cleaner. She thinks her heart is going to give out." How does she cope? "She tries to think about her kids." Just about when you think your own heart is about to give out Barajas describes the abortion itself. You will never forget her account. Her body sends her yet another warning message. She jerks back when the second of two shots of anesthetic in her cervix proves unexpectedly painful. She apologizes to the abortionist who has sternly rebuked her for moving. Barajas begins "babbling" about the C-section she went through to deliver the twins; of how she had "bucked and squirmed and apologized, then, too"; of how the doctor had arrived just in time "to make a fast incision and get the loud, healthy twins into the world, two minutes apart"; of how "their first cries were so beautiful as she briefly held each of them before they were taken off for observation"; of how she was happy, stunned. She had been unable to sleep." All this as her unborn baby is suctioned out, piece by piece. She knows why the abortionist and the nurse encourage her to continue her story. It is to "keep her distracted in order that she be more pliable during the Procedure." But she needs to recall these memories to get through what she has started. Barajas has persuaded herself it's either this baby or the babies about whose births she is now rambling. After the abortion is completed, "her heart has slowed, but she now fears it will slow too much and just stop." But she doesn't care. "Her emptiness and horror are so deep she cannot think. Silently she weeps. She cannot imagine ever stopping." Barajas bleeds and bleeds and cries and cries. I don't know what the intended message was but when they go to pick up their son from preschool, Barajas tells us that through the glass of the rolled-up window her son shows her a picture of a monster he has drawn and tries to tell her about it. She can't, of course, hear him. When she rolls down the window, she hugs him. In a preview of how she will attempt to subdue the demons running around in her soul, Barajas tells us that when she embraces him the smell of the day's damp sweat and the previous night's shampoo "fill her head, dulling for a moment the reek of disinfectant and latex." She initially bleeds a great deal but that stops. Pangs of guilt are common. Barajas recalls but does not elaborate on a chilling coincidence: she herself had been the unexpected fourth child in her own family. But two weeks later she is "steady and calm," so involved with her kids there's no time to reflect on what she had done. She knows that when the month arrives in which the baby would have been born, "it will be hard. But all she can do now is be grateful she is not pregnant." Having violated her conscience, she clings all the more to her living children. Indeed, she tells us, she feels "a closeness with the three boys, a love that is almost blinding at times." "Relief floods her," and Barajas feels gratitude to the abortion clinic "that made it possible for her not to have another child." Why did she endure this soul-crunching tragedy? Barajas's answer--to herself, first and foremost - - is that, as a result, "No one who counts on her need be shortchanged, none of the people in her care need settle for less." At this stage in dealing with her abortion, Barajas is still unable to admit that there had been one other person who needed her care most of all. There is no great punch line to my remarks. You just wonder what role the husband played. He is almost invisible. We know nothing about his relationship to his sons or his wife. Could he have said something that would have strengthened Barajas in her hour of despair and uncertainty? Could he, perhaps, have uplifted his wife's flagging spirits by vowing to assume a greater share in the arduous task of raising four small children? We have no way of knowing. What we do know is that when women tell their husbands (or boyfriends) they are pregnant, the first response frequently can be decisive. So often the woman announces to the man that she intends to abort, not as a settled decision but as a way of finding out whether he cares enough to say "No!" When their car was approaching their son's preschool, Barajas, who had wept without ceasing since leaving the abortion clinic, says she became "conscious of an anger, a rage that she cannot express the sorrow and grief to anyone, that in this tragedy she is considered a villain rather than a victim." But pro-lifers don't consider her a villain. If she needed a shoulder to cry on, we would offer one. Patient and nonjudgmental, we'd listen sympathetically as she shares the gnawing pain in her heart and to wipe away her tears. We would tell Barajas, truthfully, that no, of course she didn't "hate" her child. Too many of us are on a first-name basis with abortion to think that's true. We would tell her that we just wish one of us could have been there before the abortion to assure Barajas that she had radically underestimated herself. Whatever she thought at the time, a mother who cares that much about her family could and would find room in her life for another little one. If she doubts that, I hope she gives me a call. dave andrusko can be reached at dadandrusk@aol.com Help Pass Pro-Life Legislation! Use the NRLC Legislative Action Center The Legislative Action Center on the NRLC website now includes features that will help you to: - MONITOR the legislative actions of your elected representatives - COMMUNICATE with them about current pro-life issues - CHECK relevant voting records for both U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Reps from 1997 to now. Alternative Contact: National Right to Life 512 10th St, NW Washington Dist. of Columbia 20004 United States Today's News and Views June 11, 2003 When it comes to flipping channels, I take a back seat (or couch) to no one. Of late I've taken to watching a couple of shows at once, jumping back and forth. It's a bad habit, no doubt, but one I've come to relish. But Monday night I didn't need to try to split screen or zip to and fro to see two programs that dealt in different but equally moving ways with the humanity of the unborn child. "Dateline" and an old "Law & Order" episode came on sequentially and each in its own way sent a compelling message. NBC's Katie Couric interviewed the family of Laci and Conner Peterson on "Dateline" in what was billed as their first network interview since the bodies of Laci and her eight-month-old unborn son Conner were discovered. The pain and grief and misery etched on the faces of Laci and Conner's family--especially the grandmother and grandfather--spoke even more eloquently than did their words. Much could be said about "Speaking for Laci," but I will just say that even Couric referred to Conner as the "unborn son." What gives Sharon Rocha's sorrow such additional poignancy is her unforced insistence that the family had lost not just a daughter and a sister, but also a grandson and a nephew. Conner was already a full-fledged member of their family, and Rocha and her husband, Ron Grantski, made sure everyone knew this in an unselfconscious, natural way. When the NBC program ended, I switched to our family's television addiction, "Law & Order." In broad outlines, the episode tracked a case we all read about several years ago--an unmarried college couple who cavalierly killed their newborn child at birth and then went back to pick up the party where they had left off as if nothing had happened. Unlike the real-life case, in the drama the students are not convicted, thanks to some clever lawyering by their counsel and the unwillingness of the girl's father to testify to what he knew: that he'd found the murdered baby in the hotel room where the couple had left him. The story was not about abortion. It's about infanticide, abortion's first cousin. There was nothing about abortion in the script, as best I can remember. But the anger of the investigators, the assistant district attorney, and the district attorney at the callousness of the couple and their indignation that justice had been thwarted is a reminder that the disregard shown toward unborn life does not automatically stop at the border--birth--even if many/most people are unable to see the natural progression. But whether it's the murder of an unborn child and his mother, or the cold-blooded execution of a newborn, the lesson that people may gradually be learning is that "wantedness" is not some magic wand that transforms an "it" into a baby. The child is no less a human being, wanted or "unwanted," at birth or months before. My guess is that each day, at some level, more and more people are beginning to catch on to the incongruity, the inconsistency, the incoherence of making birth and wantedness the measure of a unborn child's humanity. And, we can pray, out of these atrocities will come a new appreciation that the littlest American is one of us. dave andrusko can be reached at dadandrusk@aol.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today's News and Views June 10, 2003 Tongue-Tied Or In an Indefensible Position? Ordinarily on my way home from work I listen to a local talk program hosted by a man whose opinion on abortion is unknown to me but who is eminently fair in his treatment of the issue. Last week was particularly hectic for me, so I missed the program that took up the Unborn Victims of Violence Act--UVVA. (Its alternate title is "Laci and Conner's Law," after Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner, who were brutally murdered last December.) But my wife was listening, and she told me of a comment that was made by a clearly exasperated host (I paraphrase, but this is close): "We can't get anyone from the other side (the pro-abortion side) to come on to talk about the issue." The first thing that hit me was that this was not the first time the host had made the same observation. I suspect that if I were on the other side, I would feel like I had stepped into quicksand--and not just on UVVA. That's just their latest nightmare. What exactly CAN they say? That an eight-month-old unborn child, wanted and loved by his mother, hadn't really existed? That when Laci's murderer took her life, it was not the life of a second human being that was also taken but a "pregnancy" ended? That's the impossible counter-intuitive position the anti-life set find themselves in. The public knows better. Polls show overwhelming support for the proposition that "prosecutors should be able to bring separate murder charges against someone who kills a fetus still in the womb" (to quote from Newsweek). But that's just one example. What do they say when minor girls are transported from states that have parental involvement laws to states that don't so that an abortion can be secured behind the parents' backs? (Not only does this violate parental rights, pro-abortionists are also fully aware that interstate transportation of minors to procure abortions often serves to conceal criminal activity such as statutory rape.) In a situation that is genuinely life and death, would they say it's okay to spirit vulnerable young girls away from their parents? What do they say to laws that guarantee that every infant born alive -- including an infant who survives an abortion procedure -- is considered a person under federal law? Would they say that the "right" to abortion guarantees a dead baby? There are any number of other abortion-related questions to which pro-abortionists stand either mute or tongue-tied. Illustrating the bind they are in, their one knee-jerk response is to insist the sky (otherwise known as Roe v. Wade)is falling. Not very convincing to an audience whose sensitivities have already been heightened by the deaths of Laci and Conner Peterson and a stream of full-color ultrasounds that seem to show up on television every day. All in all, not a good time to be pro-abortion. After all, what can they say? dave andrusko can be reached at dadandrusk@aol.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today's News and Views June 9, 2003 AMA TO VOTE ON ASSISTING SUICIDE: YOUR HELP NEEDED. Editor’s note. The following story, written by Burke Balch, is “time-sensitive.” It requires action on your part quickly. In the fight against assisted suicide, the American Medical Association (AMA) has stood tall. Once again, however, its opposition is about to be tested. Delegates to the annual AMA convention will “vote on a resolution whose adoption would effectively reverse that stand,” in Mr. Balch’s words. We need you to read this story, then contact your doctor to contact the AMA delegates from his or her state to ask them “to reject Resolution 213 and instead reaffirm the medical profession's commitment to rejecting the legitimacy of physician-assisted suicide as a medical practice." Thank you. Your help will be invaluable. ANNUAL MEETING OF AMA TO VOTE ON ASSISTING SUICIDE By Burke J. Balch, J.D. Director, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics The American Medical Association (AMA) has long stood solidly against physician-assisted suicide. At its annual meeting in Chicago June 14-19, however, its House of Delegates will vote on a resolution whose adoption would effectively reverse that stand. The Wisconsin Medical Association has proposed Resolution 213, which would reverse the AMA's support of Attorney General John Ashcroft's November 2001 ruling that federally controlled drugs may not be used to assist suicide in any state, including Oregon the only U.S. jurisdiction that has so far legalized the practice. At the time of the Ashcroft ruling, AMA President Dr. Yank Coble (then President-Elect) noted, "[T]he AMA has consistently held that physician-assisted suicide falls outside the realm of legitimate medial practice." Proponents of Resolution 213 claim that doctors may be reluctant to prescribe painkilling drugs if the use of drugs to kill patients is forbidden. However, Attorney General Ashcroft made clear that enforcement will rely on self-reporting by doctors who clearly state they've used federally controlled drugs to assist suicides (as required by Oregon law), not on second-guessing or reviewing doctors' pain relief prescriptions. To be legal under Oregon law, any case of assisted suicide must be reported as such to state authorities, with information specifying the drugs used. The Justice Department made clear that it will enforce its determination by reviewing those records, not by scrutinizing prescriptions for pain relief. Indeed, on the day of his ruling, Ashcroft wrote the AMA, "[T]here will be no increase in D[rug] E[nforcement] A[dministration] scrutiny of physicians' prescription of controlled substances to control pain in any state, including Oregon, as a consequence of today's decision. Consequently, physicians throughout the country should feel confident that they may prescribe federally controlled drugs to the full extent desirable to relieve pain without any fear that their prescriptions will be questioned or investigated as a result of today's action." Accordingly, Dr. Coble said, "We see nothing in this decision to concern physicians committed to aggressive pain treatment at the end of life." The Ashcroft Directive was challenged in the courts and is unlikely to take effect until an ultimate decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Euthanasia proponents hope that if the AMA reverses its support of the directive and files a "friend of the court" brief attacking it, the Supreme Court will be less likely to agree that the federal government can legally refuse to facilitate assisting suicide with the use of federally controlled drugs. "It is important," said NRLC Executive Director David N. O'Steen, Ph.D., "that pro-life people ask their doctors to contact the AMA delegates from their state, urging them to reject Resolution 213 and instead reaffirm the medical profession's commitment to rejecting the legitimacy of physician- assisted suicide as a medical practice." The names of AMA delegates should be available from NRLC state affiliates. dave andrusko can be reached at dadandrusk@aol.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WHAT ABOUT ABSTINENCE? I was holding a notice from my 13-year-old son's school announcing a meeting to preview the new course in sexuality. Parents could examine the curriculum and take part in an actual lesson presented exactly as it would be given to the students. When I arrived at the school, I was surprised to discover only about a dozen parents there. As we waited for the presentation, I thumbed through page after page of instructions in the prevention of pregnancy or disease. I found abstinence mentioned only in passing. When the teacher arrived with the school nurse, she asked if there were any questions. I asked why abstinence did not play a noticeable part in the educational material. What happened next was shocking. There was a great deal of laughter,and someone suggested that if I thought abstinence had any merit, I should go back to burying my head in the sand. The teacher and the nurse said nothing as I drowned in a sea of embarrassment. My mind had gone blank,and I could think of nothing to say. The teacher explained to me that the job of the school was to teach "facts," and the home was responsible for moral training. I sat in silence for the next twenty minutes as the sexuality course was explained. The other parents seemed to give their unqualified support to the materials. At the break time, the teacher announced that there were donuts in the back of the room and requested that everyone put on a name tag and mingle with each other. Everyone moved to the back of the room. As I watched them affixing their name tags and shaking hands, I sat deep in thought. I was ashamed that I had not been able to convince them to include a serious discussion of abstinence in the educational materials. I uttered a silent prayer for guidance. My thoughts were interrupted by the teacher's hand on my shoulder. "Won't you join the others, Mr. Layton?" The nurse smiled sweetly at me. "The donuts are good." "Thank you, no," I replied. "Well, then, how about a name tag? I'm sure the others would like to meet you." "Somehow I doubt that," I replied. "Won't you please join them?" she coaxed. Then I heard a still, small voice whisper, "Don't go." The message in my head was unmistakable: "Don't go!" "I'll just wait here," I said. When the class was called back to order, the teacher looked around the long table and thanked everyone for putting on name tags. She ignored me. Then she said, "Now we're going to give you the same lesson we'll be giving your children. Everyone please peel off your name tags and look at the back of the tag." I watched in silence as the tags came off. "Now then, I drew a tiny flower on the back of one of the tags. Who has it, please?" the teacher asked. The gentleman across from me held it up. "Here it is!" "All right," she said. "The flower represents disease. Do you recall with whom you shook hands? " He pointed to a couple of people. "Very good," she replied. "The handshake in this case represents intimacy. So the two people you had contact with now have the disease." There was laughter and joking among the parents. The teacher continued, "And whom did the two of you shake hands with?" The point was well taken, and she explained how this lesson would show students how quickly disease is spread. She concluded by saying, "Since we all shook hands, we all have the disease." It was then that I heard the still, small voice again. "Speak now," it said, "but be humble." I wryly noted the latter admonition, then rose from my chair. I apologized for any upset I might have caused earlier, congratulated the teacher on an excellent lesson that would impress the youth, and concluded by saying I had only one small point I wished to make. "Not all of us were infected with the disease," I said. "One of us ... abstained." ---- Author Unknown------

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