- - - But Me & the Bros' & the Buds' of the neighborhood jusk kept on-a-playing & splashing & diving & going every which way in the backyard pool - - - Not unlike a Zillion Little Fresh young Spermatoids splashing about in the billowing Seas of a Most-Accommodating-Womb. The Ringing stopped . . . . . . but then started up all over again (this was long before the days of Voice-Mail).

I -- being the eldest of the Brothers -- finally stopped my Hoosie-Gawaying, and ran across the yard & up the hillock & into the back door leading to a hallway phone dripping wet. I was about 11. Picking up the phone I listened to some strange male stranger let loose a half-coherant tirade about my Daddie .... "YOUR FATHER IS A BABY-KILLER !!! -- HE'S GOING TO BURN IN HELL !!"

HELL ?? --- Well, hell, I mean, heck ... we, our family, didn't even go to church -- and to this day I've never set foot in a church or synagogue ever in my life ... cept'n fer maybe a few or more weddings; my own wedding bein held in the wifey's Budhist Temple. We just t'wernt a Bibble Family, plain & clear. While the Jesus People were Praying, me & the Brothers were usually working the fields with Paw .... after reading the Sunday papers at the Family Breakfast Table.

I woke & came downstairs one Sunday a week or two before the ArssssWhole who called mah Daddie a "Baby-Killer" called to find "M" (mommie) gnashing her teeth and fuming ... as I never ever saw her do .... (Pop & M were straight out of the Ozzie & Harriet press .... I never saw or heered of either ever having a tiff that would raise the decible levels of the conversation; ... Never once .... in 6 decades of marriage ... it was weird ... in a TV Land kind of way; till I learned otherways I grewed up thinking Ozzie & Harriet were just plain old normal .... even if M did raise a brood of Eddie Haskel Weisenheimers.

Anyways ... so's I come down to the breakfast table to find M in a most disagreeable mood .... over some article in the newspaper (one of the big city papers of the potent Irish-Polish-Italian, et al Catholic North East). In short, M began railing against the (obvious to her) Catholic reporter who was insinuating that, in not exactly the same words, that her husband was indeed ... "a baby killer."

In the Days of Yore ... (the Pre-Wade early mid-sixties) ... my daddie had been an outspoken proponent of changing laws that would legalize abortion. Sometime later Paw, a physician, confided to me that he'd seen enough of the botched, self-butcheries to cause him to speak up. He found himself doing Repair Work on the Desperate who had nowhere to go. ... While in private practice, and risking much, he saw to it that patients got the medical care they sought.

For me, the 60s meanwhile unfolded into the 70s with a slew of partner-agreed to abortions before hitching up with a lady of some fertility (as one of nine siblings). But as the miscarriages kept piling up (four-in-a-row) I began to take a more serious study as to what was going on ... or going wrong ... Down There. Problem Pregnancy physicians were solicited ... careful monitoring ... and undue exertion avoided (one early, undetected loss occured in the Washington Monument).

Among the monitoring of a later pregnancy we watched the development vis the ultra-sound live video clips. Even the infant-esmal 'blob' on the tube showed 'life signs' (I later had some of the zygotian-to-readytopop frames laid out on some tee-shirts with this daughter's name & birthdate embossed below the black & whites ... they vanished into the cosmos after being presented on her 16th birthday ... never to see the light of day again.

My own take regarding the Jesus People Nation & their defense of the Zygote -- AND as a Non-Bibble-Thumper & Son-of-an-Abortion Rights Advocate -- is simply this:

.... The Jesus People are as sincere in their heartfelt fight to stop government funded abortions as were the Jesus People who were the incindiary vanguard of the Abolition Movement that created the GOP (the same party that, by the way, served at the vanguard of the Woman's Suffrage Movement against President Wilson & the Democrats in Congress (ALL yellow-ribboned Founding Mothers allied themselves behind the User-Friendly GOP) ... and no, I myself have NEVER even voted for a Republican).

The Jesus People considered Women to be as fully human as Men ... Black Americans as fully human as Whites (congressional census figures considered Blacks as 2/3rds Human) .... and they are equally convinced that "That Thing" in the womb is verifyably "human" .... with all the life signs (brain waves, heart beats, sexuality determined, extended limbs, etc ... whether in minutia or not .... extensions of a thousand generations of a Beings whose programmed genetic codes are ALREADY IN PLACE (i.e. Granny's Green-Eye Color, Daddie's 6 foot-plus height, Cousin Fredrika's shared Freckles, Mom's I.Q. etc, etc, etc.).

Perhaps it should be up to a woman to decide ... after confering with her mate ... whether or not to Butcher the Growing Child Within (for Any with Eyes to See ... who have seen both the PBS & Anti-Wade documentaries ... could call it nothing less).

If the Pro-Choice groups would allow such films to be required in abortion clinics, the mother would be able to make a more intelligent decision as to what is really going on Down There. Why would groups such as NOW wish to enforce ignorance ?? .. perhaps the same reason Slaveholders did not want Science to show that African Americans were not, in fact, an offshoot of the Ape, or that Women's smaller brains made them less Schmart.

Some People become Activists to protect "Un-Fertilized" EAGLE EGGS ... then, in another breath, promote the choice of destroying "Fertilized" HUMAN EGGS; possibly because Human Beings haven't yet been placed on the Endangered Species list. --- Then, ... some people are simply Assholes, like the Jerk who phoned and told a little kid that his Daddie who tossed busted GI's back together on a South Pacific Island was a killer.