News bulletin

~We’ve raised nearly $400 for AbortionSafety.com! Keep those donations coming!

~Pro-life atheist and conservative political commentator S. E. Cupp has an incredibly eloquent response to the pro-abortion Keith Olbermann, who insinuated that her parents should have killed her prenatally. His exact words were “On so many levels, she’s a perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does.”

~Americans United for Life summarizes what’s wrong with “Maria Talks,” a sex ed website that shamefully glosses over the risks of abortion (“it’s much easier than it sounds”), while noting that adoption is “pretty tough.” Pro-life groups are demanding that the site, which is funded by the government of Massachusetts, be taken down. (For a pro-life alternative to Maria Talks, check out Grow Your Knowledge, a SecularProLife.org project!)

~Jezebel shares the fascinating story of Gaby Rodriguez, a high school senior who faked a pregnancy for nearly seven months in order to study social attitudes toward teen moms.

Before taking off her fake baby belly in front of the entire student body, Gaby told her audience, “Many things were said about me. Many things traveled all the way back to me.”

Then, she asked several students and teachers to read statements from 3×5 cards, quotes people actually said about her during the course of her experiment.

Her best friend, Saida Cortes, a 17-year-old senior who was sitting in the front row, read card No. 3: “Her attitude is changing, and it might be because of the baby or she was always this annoying and I never realized it.”

It grew quiet in the gym as more and more quotes were read aloud. Then Gaby dropped her bomb: “I’m fighting against those stereotypes and rumors because the reality is I’m not pregnant.”

What Gaby did took incredible courage and dedication. Unfortunately, the full results of her research are not yet available. I look forward to learning more. Did her fellow students encourage her to “take care of it,” lest she “ruin her life”? Or did she find a supportive community of life-affirming teens? What about the attitudes of her teachers? Was she subjected to “slut-shaming,” or treated as just unlucky? Gaby will present her findings to a board of community members in May, so let’s hope for a follow-up story.