She called on a Tuesday afternoon for no particular reason. It seemed as if she just wanted to talk to someone. She told me she is a Mormon and has four children. She also said she is against abortion but was under the impression that most anti-abortion people are a little crazy. I assured her that pro-lifers are "the salt of the earth" - they love people -they love life. "The news media has been doing a good brainwashing job on the American people." I informed her.

     We talked about the Mormon Church - how fast it is growing, probably because they believe in having many children. I told her that most Christian women (including Catholics) are practicing birth control. "Yes," she said, "I look at my Catholic friends and wonder why they are doing it." She went on to say that she had been chiding her mother for using the IUD. She explained in detail the action of the device which causes an early abortion. She said she told her mother she could be aborting several babies a year! "Yes," I said, agreeing with her. "That’s exactly what happens with the birth control pill. Most women don’t realize this because it isn’t common knowledge." "Oh, no," she corrected me with her voice rising, "That’s not true. The birth control pill prevents conception." "No," I again stated, "the birth control pill can act the same as the IUD. The baby dies in about seven days after conception by not being able to attach itself to the uterine wall because of the action of the birth control pill." "NO, YOU’RE WRONG!!" SHE SAID, HER VOICE STRIDENT WITH EMOTION. "THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL DOESN’T ALLOW EGGS TO BE PRODUCED!!" "I’m sorry," I told her, "but I’ve been involved with this subject for a long time, and I know what I’m talking about." I could hear the click of the receiver.

     It was obvious to me by her extreme agitation that this young woman was confronted for the first time with the fact that she, like her mother, had been killing her unborn children and she couldn’t face the TRUTH. I had asked for her address during the course of our conversation, so I mailed her several articles on the birth control pill as an abortifacient.

     Judy called in the middle of February for a pregnancy test. I can remember that she was a seventeen-year-old San Lorenzo High School student (we had been distributing literature in that area) who took a bus to the medical group in Hayward where we do our pregnancy testing. The result was negative. At that time she told me not to send the literature because she had already seen it (obviously from our literature distribution).

     Three months later Judy called again for a pregnancy test. Again, she insisted that she had already seen the literature. "Is this confidential?" she asked nervously. I assured her that it was. Again, Judy took a bus in the morning to the medical center and later on in the evening I gave Judy the result. It was POSITIVE this time. Judy was frightened when she got the news. She said lots of kids run away rather than tell their parents, but she knew she wasn’t going to do that. I kept emphasizing to Judy that she must now put herself in the hands of Jesus. She said she did and went to church on Saturday (Seventh Day Adventist) and that her boyfriend (18) was Catholic.

     In the course of our conversation, she revealed that her boyfriend had already said that he wanted the baby if she ever got pregnant. Then she told me that she wanted the baby. "I just couldn’t have an abortion," she said. I asked Judy if the literature she had seen had had an effect on her. "OH, YES," she said. "IT WAS VERY CONVINCING TO ME!"

Joan called on the lst of April for information. We had a brief conversation. She was two weeks late and already had a pregnancy test at a pregnancy consultation center in Fremont. She said they told her she should have an abortion because she was only 15 years old and was too young to have a baby. When I asked Joan for her address and phone number, she refused because she hadn’t told her mother and was afraid she would somehow find out. When I told her how important the literature was to her decision and asked whether I could send it to her boyfriend, she readily agreed. Since Joan didn’t give me her phone number, I thought it was the last I would hear from her.

     Two weeks later Joan called again. At first I didn’t remember her, but when she commented that someone had sent her seventeen-year-old boyfriend literature with the pictures of aborted babies and now he was "dead set against the abortion". I remembered. "Joan," I said to her, "I sent him that literature. Do you remember?"

     We then began a long, serious talk about her situation. She said she didn’t know what to do. She gave many excuses: "I have to finish high school, I’m too young, etc. etc. I began to emphasize prayer to her, telling her to pray to Jesus for the love she needed to have this baby. I told Joan the story of another fifteen-year-old girl in a similar situation. A year after having counseled the girl together with her parents in my living room, I met her again when I was speaking at a college and she was in the audience. She came up to me and told me how well everything was working out. (Her mother was baby-sitting while she was at school.) "You should consider yourself very lucky that you have a boyfriend who wants you to keep the baby." I told Joan most boyfriends want abortions to avoid responsibility. "What does your mother think?" I asked Joan. "Well, she’s leaving it up to me she answered. "You know she had two abortions when she was younger." I kept emphasizing to her that she should pray, pray about this. As we hung up, I asked Joan for her phone number. This time she gave it to me. A few days later I called her back. "Have you been praying, Joan?" were my first words to her. "Yes," she answered. "What’s your decision?" "I’m keeping the baby," she said with a happy tone in her voice.