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Squatting on the Washington Mall, Rose was able to see straight up Jenny Lemke's nostrils. They were kidney-shaped and sooo pink—but then never before (Rose realized as she focused the camera) had she spent so much time concentrating on the underside of another person's nose. In fact, if you stared at a human nose long enough, it stopped looking human at all, or even animal. What came to mind was a begonia stem: waxy and tuberous and luminescent.

A few feet away from Jenny Lemke, a tall woman was giving a speech to the loose crowd of Fetal Rights supporters. She stood with her back to the rope—a thin, pale woman with a heart-shaped face and black hair pulled back in a French braid. Her voice trembled as she spoke.

"The message I want to send out today to the people who insist that it's OK to abort America's precious babies, is that George Washington would roll over in his grave if he knew what was happening in the country he fought to make free!"

"Amen, Sibyl," shouted a grey-haired woman, waving an "FRL" banner over her head. "You preach it to them."

The speaker turned and shook her finger toward the United for Choice bandstand 50 yards down the field. "Abraham Lincoln would hang his head in shame," she went on, "if he knew what was happening beneath the Washington Monument today! Some people claim that in America, it should be a woman's right to choose. But how can we the people allow one American the choice to take the life of another American—without even a trial or a judge or a jury?" She put her hands together in a gesture of prayer. "People, some of you are for capital punishment. I personally happen to be against it. But either way, how can we allow precious babies to be put to death without due process? That is what is happening in this country. Sweet, innocent children, every day, are given capital punishment without a trial, for no reason that is just, and in ways more cruel than anything even allowed for criminals—in ways that even many liberal, pro-abortion people say are barbaric and inhumane. How can we allow this? Doesn't the plight of these precious babies stir our hearts? How long can we look upon this sea of troubles without taking arms to oppose them?" She separated her hands and held them over the crowd. "Oh God," she said, turning her face toward the sun but closing her eyes, "we ask that you deliver the children. Deliver the children! Oh, God, deliver them!"

Rose glanced back to Jenny Lemke, who hovered nearby with her arms crossed and her mouth straight.

"What do we ask?" screeched Sibyl, looking back down at the human faces around her.

"Freedom!" they shouted back.

"What does freedom mean?"

"The right to be born!"

"Who are we?"

"Precious babies!"

She clapped. "Come on, let's all shout it. What do we ask?"

"Freedom!"

"Come on everybody now. What does freedom mean?"

"The right to be born!"

"Who are we?"

"Precious babies!"

"Yes! Yes! Amen! Thank you, Lord!"

The Fetal Rights crowd cheered and shook their posterboard signs: Stop Abortion Now, You Save Baby Whales but Kill Baby Humans, The Supreme Court will answer to a Higher Court. Rose turned her camera on an elderly black woman, clicked and swung around to a young man holding hands with a couple of little girls. She clicked again. The children's faces were red in the heat. The smaller one had a ring of chocolate around her lips.

"Thank you," Sibyl said. "Oh thank you, and bless you. Our numbers may be small today, but remember Joshua and the walls of Jericho. We will lead the little children out of Egypt. We will bring down Roe v. Wade. God is on our side—"

Suddenly there was a loud sprooiiinnngg and a high-pitched whine from the PA system downfield. An electric guitar thrummed once and then drums came in with a bass and piano. A roar arose from the sea of marchers around the United for Choice bandstand.

Rose stood up for a better view: a line of people in white t-shirts and blue jeans were filing onstage—dancing, smiling, holding out their hands to the crowd. The marchers howled and jumped up with their arms out, as if begging the people on the bandstand to jump down. Rose fumbled in her bag for the telephoto lens.

"We're gonna march, children, what's that sound? You say Roe v. Wade ain't coming down?"

Sibyl's mouth kept moving. "Don't listen to Hollywood!" Rose heard her yell, but the words were lost.

"Do you see who that is over there?" shouted a big-nosed, short-haired woman right into Rose's ear. She was holding an "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart" sign.

"No, who is it?"

"It's the whole cast of St. Terry's."

"What's that?"

"The TV show! About the Catholic hospital—my God, where have you been?"

"I haven't seen it."

"Oh my God, it's a great show. I love that show. I didn't know they could sing. There's that guy … he's married to that girl in Sex and the Law … oh I am so not good with names."

Rose watched for a moment, then swung her right leg up and over the rope. She twisted and lifted the other leg behind her, glancing around. It gave her a strange feeling to cross to the Fetal Rights side of the line: horror mixed with pride over doing something never done by anybody she'd ever known. There was a CNN crew just a few yards away, slowly panning the crowd.

"Oh, you have to watch St. Terry's," shouted the big woman. "I watch it every week with my kids."

"Are you Catholic?" Rose shouted back.

"Fear strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you're pregnant and afraid. Your right to choose, they'll come and take it away … "

"Yes, are you?"

"No, I'm not anything. I'm not religious."

"Well hey, we're all brothers and sisters here, right? Jenny's Catholic but Sibyl Westford's Pentecostal or something. I just wish—what I wish is that we could get some of these celebrities on our side. Think how many people would join us!"

Rose nodded, taking note of Sibyl's last name as she turned to get another picture. Sibyl was praying with her eyes clenched shut and her head bowed. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Rose came in tight on the hands: white knuckles, bare nails, thumbs flexing in time to the music. Nearby stood Jenny Lemke staring around with those pink nostrils flexed: she looked like a hawk about to soar. She shifted from foot to foot and stared at the singers, unblinking. "She's a cool one," Rose whispered to herself.

"March children, what's that sound? You say Roe v. Wade ain't coming down?"

* * *

Jenny Lemke was biting the edge of her tongue. She held it curled up in the back of her mouth, pressed between her molars, and she bit down until she tasted her own blood. Oh, the things she would like to say, couldn't say. The sun was too hot. There were too few counter-marchers and they seemed like a fringe element. Too many white males. No gen-x'ers. The enemy's bandstand looked like a tall ship rocking on waves of posterboard. Its banner fluttered high above rows and rows of white carnations: Thank You America for the Choice. How can you fight Hollywood? How can you fight an image?

From the corner of her eye, Jenny had noticed the pretty woman with the camera and wondered why she'd climbed over to this side of the rope. Was she a supporter? Most of the other cameras had flocked downfield. A TV crew from a local cable station had stopped by early this morning for a quote and she'd given it to them: "We are not here in hate, we are here in love. We want to tell these women that we love them and that we fight for everyone's right to live and to be free. We come in love."

She bit her tongue harder. Had she told the truth? Part of it. Whether she believed them or not, she had to say those things, and there wasn't any way to tell the truth, not really … they wouldn't let you tell the truth. There was no right way to do this, not when you brought TV into it.

Someone stepped up behind her. A hand touched her shoulder and she turned with her eyes half-closed, expecting nothing.

Sister Mary Sebastian stood there with a calm face, all in white from head to toe.

"Oh, it's you," said Jenny, surprised.

"Didn't you believe I was coming?"

"Well, no, I didn't think you'd be able to. But I'm happy you're here."

"I have things to give you."

"Yes." Jenny took a deep breath. It was hot and she felt claustrophobic in the middle of this crowd. She was conscious of her lungs swelling against her ribs. "Well," she said, looking downfield, "What do you think of the rock and roll show over there?"

"It's impressive."

Jenny laughed. "That's our problem, Mary. We can't sing."

"I should get going," said the nun. "I'll walk over to the Holocast Museum. You and Sibyl can find me when you're ready."

"All right." Jenny turned back around. She saw that the woman with the camera was still watching. Had she taken pictures? Jenny stepped in front of her supporters and lifted her arms. Her wrists stretched like vines from her suit sleeves: her followers turned their faces toward her, but their eyes—well, did she just imagine that their eyes shifted downfield, toward the celebrities and the carnations? Did she only imagine it? It seemed to her as though the field was suddenly tilted slightly on one end; the eyes of her own followers edged away from her. How could they help it? How could she help it? How could anybody compete with a force like that—with Hollywood on the rampage?

Jenny stood on her tiptoes and shook her fist. "What do we ask?" she yelled.

Rose, watching Jenny Lemke's mouth through a camera lens, mouthed back, "Freedom."

Jenny repeated the question. "What do we ask?"

"Freedom," shouted the counter-protestors, barely audible over the band.

"Do we ask for movie stars?"

"No!"

"Do we ask for TV stars?"

"No!"

"Do we ask for costume Christians?"

"No!"

"What do we say to Hollywood!"

Scattered screams: "Go home!" "Stop telling us what to believe!" "Get a real job!"

"Who are we?" Jenny felt dizzy.

"Precious babies!" the crowd yelled. No one downfield seemed to notice. No one turned to look. The singers came to the end of their song and stopped; the guitars and drums and piano dropped from the air and the crowd applauded.

"Precious babies!" Jenny shouted over the cheers. "Precious, precious babies!"

A huge roar rose again from the other side, shouts and hollers and drumbeats. It was time. The Choice people were on the move, swelling away from their own bandstand into the mall. To Jenny they looked like a huge hill of ants swarming outward, falling into ranks. She knew she shouldn't see them this way—God didn't see them this way—but she couldn't help it. Their faces were hard like insect faces. Their skin was hard. Their brains were hard. You couldn't reach these people.

Sibyl was always begging to use bloody pictures, specimen jars—shock therapy, she called it—but Jenny had realized that blood and gore only hardened them more: this revelation had come to her the day she saw a young woman stop right in front of a poster of a dead child and literally scream at it—"I hate you, you self-righteous, religious bigots! I wish you'd all been aborted, I wish you were all dead."

Jenny wondered how to explain this to her people—to the nuns, the Mennonites, the Pentecostals, the small handful of non-Christians, all the good people who came triumphantly to her marches with their bloody pictures and their gory signs as if the point of this whole movement was to shock and condemn and convince people of what they already thought—these hard people—that a human being could be objectified as a mass of tissue and blood.

If anybody had it right, it was the Japanese, who set up shrines for their aborted children and brought them gifts: little shoes, flowers, candy to lay on the stones. At least those people saw past the flesh to the spirits of their dead children. Life was not blood, blood was only a symbol for life. Yet if she really believed this herself, why could she only see the stale masks of flesh, the hard faces of her enemies? Why, if she believed that people were spirits, did she hate the very sight, the very hard-stale-flesh faces of these people so much?

* * *

It took an hour for the vast crowd to pass. Rose kept her shutter going: she caught face after face without really looking at any face in particular. She knew that later she'd look back at these pictures and feel the pain on the other side. Most of the women walked with their eyes on the ground: some women wept, one carried a sign that read So Stone Me, another that said I Made the Choice.

"Yes sister, you did make the choice to get pregnant," called out one of the counter-protestors.

The woman looked up sadly. She didn't search for the person who'd spoken to her; she just turned her round face and large blue eyes on the crowd and said calmly, "Actually, I was raped by my boyfriend."

Rose started to let the camera down, but then heard Jenny Lemke's voice. She swung around and focused—

"I'm very sorry that that happened to you," called out Jenny in a strong, clear voice. Her eyes were wide open and shining. "That was a very terrible thing that happened to you, and if I could change it, I would."

The woman who'd spoken slowed, but somebody else yelled "Hypocrite!"

"Sure you're sorry about her," shouted one of the marchers. "You care more about fetuses than people."

"Fetuses are people," said Jenny.

"Yeah, well once they're born you're done with them."

A Fetal Rights supporter leaned over the rope and pointed at the speaker. "Oh yeah, and like there are no pro-life adoption agencies or social services. That is the oldest, crappiest argument in the book—"

"Go home, you racists! You sadists!"

"You go home, and stop trying to keep murder legal."

Jenny held up her hands. "Don't!" she yelled to her followers. "Don't! Everybody, let them pass without heckling them. These women are not our enemies. God loves these women!"

"You're damn right about that," said a woman carrying a sign with the words I Shall Not Be Moved painted on it in beautiful calligraphy. Rose looked over the top of her camera and then lifted it again. She swung back towards Jenny Lemke and saw that her face no longer looked so fierce; she had tears in her eyes. Rose clicked. The sun was high. She decided to change filters.

* * *

Jenny waited until most of the marchers had passed, and then slipped back through her own crowd and crossed the lawn to the Holocaust Museum. She wouldn't take Sibyl with her. Sibyl was strong and dedicated to the cause, but she had a big mouth, too: she didn't need to hear everything.

The architecture of the museum was striking. It looked like a concentration camp resurrected as a library. She'd never been inside before. Now, walking through, she avoided looking at the photographs on display. Too much. And yet … she felt the dark eyes all around her, watching as she passed. She kept walking until she found the nun on a bench beside a water fountain.

She sat down and crossed her legs. "How are you, Mary?"

"Very well."

"You look good. It's been five years, hasn't it?"

"I'm getting older all the time, but the kids keep me young."

"That's great."

"Have a drink of water there, Jenny. You can get dehydrated on a hot day like this."

"Thank you, I'm not thirsty."

"We all need to drink more." The nun sighed, and put her head back against the wall. "Well, " she said.

"Is the school doing well?"

"Very well. The children are all very well, and we have a new gymnasium in progress." She turned and smiled. "I have a package for you."

"I heard you might."

"She has some serious health concerns, but we think she'll be all right."

"Does the mother know?"

"No, we couldn't tell her. You know that."

"This is always my biggest struggle." Jenny bit her tongue again.

"She made her choice," said Sister Mary. "She made it. Wasn't that what she wanted? This is like heaven, where none of what she wants counts anymore. It's a life-after-death kind of a thing."

"But some of these children may want to know. Later on, don't you think?"

"I can't see how. Or why. Would you want to know? I wouldn't."

Jenny's face tightened.

"Anyway, don't forget that what we're doing is not—"

"I know, I know. This is just a side thing for me, Mary. Usually I'm a very law-abiding person. This is a side thing for me."

The nun's voice dropped. "This is the Holocaust. That's what this is. We just do what we can. And it ain't much, either."

"No." Jenny smiled. "How is Theresa doing, by the way? The novitiate and everything—I could hardly believe it."

"Theresa will make a wonderful nun. She wants to stay on at the school and teach."

"Does she wear a habit now?"

"Yes, but it's her choice. We'd never try to confine her. She has all the freedom in the world."

"That's good, then."

They spoke for a few more minutes, and then the nun went into the women's room. Jenny stood up and walked slowly back through the galleries to the exit door. She stepped from the quiet of the dark museum into the sunlight and the noise, relieved to have that part over with. But as she started back across the Mall to find Sibyl, somebody came walking up behind her, calling her name. She whirled around. It was that same photographer, that nice-looking woman with the serious face.

"Jenny Lemke?"

"Yes, that's me."

"I'm Rose Merriman. I left a message on your machine yesterday."

"Oh yes, I remember—"

"I'm a free-lance journalist."

"Yes."

"I wondered if I could speak to you sometime soon. Maybe this week. I'm doing a book and I'd—well, I'd like to ask you a few questions about the Fetal Rights League." Rose tilted her head, keeping one hand on her camera. Her hands looked soft to Jenny: her nails were short.

"I'm always happy to talk to the press," said Jenny, "assuming they're fair."

"I will be. How about tomorrow? I could come to your office."

"My office is at my house." Jenny smiled. "You can come for coffee, if that's fine with you. Nine o'clock? I have a card in my purse here with the address."

"Thank you."

"What's your name again? Rose?"

"Yes."

"Nice to meet you, Rose."

Rose smiled. She turned away, sighing, while Jenny Lemke was still calling out "See you tomorrow!"

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine.
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