Inside NOW

 Inside NOW

Prolife missionary, Carole Lafrenier, rented booth space at the 2002 Texas State NOW Conference in Dallas, Sept. 20-22, in order to serve as witness to Jesus and stand for the unborn. Brenda Spurlock reports on the event:

Members attending the Texas State NOW Conference didn't quite know what to make of Carole and me. They were adept at quickly scanning the Women Killed by Abortion poster and the religious and prolife literature on our table as they passed by, while appearing not to even notice. A few of the older activists did seem to scowl a little deeper each successive time they passed us. Our table was squarely in front of the primary meeting room so they had to pass by often.

One woman finally paused long enough to pick up a pamphlet, look at it, and mutter, "So you're not pro-choice, eh? Too bad!" Carole replied, "Oh, we're for choice, we just happen to think that abortion is a terrible choice for the both the mother and the baby."

Conference program topics included "Recruiting Activists" and "Revitalizing NOW Chapters." We understood this better when we discovered there were only 43 attendees and NOW just "broke even" on conference expenses. We weren't sure whether we were allowed to stay due to this or because organizers were caught off guard and didn't know what to say to us, (though we've never noticed NOW members having this problem before...) They had rented the space to Carole's crisis pregnancy center, now in the planning stages, Choices for Women, and probably mistook it for an abortion clinic.

Surprisingly, one of the women who played a background role in the conference, having seemingly ignored us for a dozen trips up and down the hall, finally stopped and told us that she was prolife. "God and I had a conversation about it and that's why I'm prolife," she said. This time we were caught off guard! Glory!

The conference featured speeches by political candidates who support NOW. "If he's Borden, he's got to be good!" according to the campaign literature of Jack Borden, an emaciated Democrat running for Dallas County Treasurer. Mr. Borden is a 4th degree Knight of Columbus and a graduate of Holy Apostles Seminary. He stopped by our table and favored us with a description of the Dallas Gay Day float for which he and his "better-half, " (Kenny), had won first place several years ago.

One young candidate walked by lamenting to a friend that she had "...to run against a right wing extremist nut..."

Meanwhile, three women huddled in the open area at an exit discussing a gay and lesbian organization.

At the table next to us the representative for Jane's Due Process, Inc., a group dedicated to making sure teens who want an abortion will be able to bypass the Texas parental notification law, had a basket of fruit flavored condoms for freebies. Included with the condom was advertising for the organization and a cartoon with information about "Emergency Contraception, in case the condom breaks, you forgot to take your pill, or, you had sex when you didn't want or plan to." (...Didn't want to?...) All was presented in a way to appeal to the teenager.

The highlight of the day for many of the attendees seemed to be the discovery that gentle saints with Operation Save America were outside. The cry went up,

      "They're picketing us!"
      "Look at that poster!"
      "They took my photo!"
      "There's a guy out there with a great big Bible!"

We wanted to say, "Honey, that's because he serves a great big God!"