SIGNED WITH A FLOURISH

Luky
IN THE SEVENTIES MANY OF US CAMPAIGNED FOR A CLAUSE TO BE APPENDED TO PROPOSED ABORTION LEGISLATION. We collected signatures on a petition during the campaign.
  The clause in question was to make provision that medical staff whose consciences would not allow them to work with abortions - if these were legalized - would be permitted to refuse to assist, without running the danger of losing their employment.

Worth it
Comfort-loving though I am, the rights of the unborn, so infinitely beautiful yet so pathetically vulnerable, are of paramount importance to my mind.
  I would willingly work a lifetime to save one foetus from being destroyed. Hence I spent several days wearing out shoe leather while collecting signatures.
  You'll think I'm saying this for effect, but it's a fact that at least three devout churchgoers got hot under the collar and packed me off with more firmness than tact.
  Later a medical professional I approached smiled benevolently and said he'd first need to check with his confreres before he could decide what stand to take.
  A pharmacist dillied and dallied and then, courteously but regretfully declined to sign.
  You'd have thought I had asked them to protest against the proposed legislation as such, and by golly, if we'd been given half a chance, I'd willingly have done that too.
  There was one delightful woman serving in a department store, who restored my faith in humanity. Having signed the form with a flourish, she turned to another assistant.

Loud and clear
"Sarie, would you agree that abortion is murder?" she called out, oblivious of the stares of passers-by. Mind you, I had not suggested any such thing.
  "What's that word in Afrikaans?" inquired Sarie, who was opening some boxes.
"Vrugafdrywing", my new friend replied.
  "Oh that! Yes, of course I do", Sarie said with conviction.
   "Well, you'd better sign this then," my friend instructed, and that's how it came about that Sarie's was the last signature I collected.

Catherine Nicolette
Having grown up in a strictly religious family, you would have thought my upbringing would have been somewhat restrictive.
  It is certainly true that I wasn't allowed to wear revealing clothing, ride on motorbikes, wear lipstick before sixteen or date until I was at least thirty three [according to Dad, that would be the age I would have enough sense to make good marriage choices].
  However in matters of knowledge about life, my parents were remarkably liberal about giving us all the info on the birds and bees without a blush in sight.
  When I was five and a half and my brother was four, he asked my mom where babies came from. She sat us down and told us the facts gently.
  I was astounded. I had always thought adults were a bit odd, but This Took The Biscuit. However, I kept my very youthful counsel to myself.
  At the end of the fact revealing mission, mom sat looking at us and asked, 'Do you have any questions?'
  My brother replied, 'Yes.' She asked, 'Yes, dear, what is it?'
He answered, 'Can we go and play now?'

  And so we did. But not until after she had asked me slightly anxiously [I was somewhat of a News of the World] not to tell all the other little girls in my class what she had told me.
  Their mommies and daddies, Mom explained, would tell them in their own way, and in their own right time.

  Which all led to the situation where I, in Sub A, had to listen to little fellow infant classers telling me, 'I was brought by the stork,' and another, 'I was found in the cabbage patch.'
  I looked thoughtfully at the latter little lady,' Some cabbage', I found myself thinking, and gave a mental shake of the head.
  Full knowledge was sometimes a difficult thing. I was already learning when to speak and when to hold my peace.

Slap in the face
  When I was aged 14, another school companion asked me where babies came from. I thought she was joking. She wasn't.
  She told me she had asked her mom where babies had come from, and her mother had slapped her through the face and called her, 'You dirty girl!'
  I couldn't believe it. I wasn't enamoured at having to tell her the facts, but I thought someone had to.
   If her parents weren't up to the task, how would she know to make sensible choices when the time came?
  So I told her as best I could. When I had finished, she stared at me. 
  Then she said, 'I always knew there was something about you. Now I know what it is: you're a liar."

   Something told me she hadn't liked my explanation. But so sad, too bad; at least she knew about life.

Biology Project
In Standard 9 we had to start a two year project to be handed in for marks towards our June matric exams.
  For some reason I decided to do the project on the human reproductive systems. 
  I had completely forgotten about doing this project until four years ago, when I was visiting Mom.
  I had looked through papers and albums she had kept when I came across my project. As I flipped through the pages, I couldn't believe how explicit the drawings I had made for the project were.

  They would have been fine, except I distinctly remember approaching Dad asking him if I had done the drawings right.
  He looked up from his newspaper, looked at the images over his glasses.
   'Very nice, Nog, very nice', he murmured and went back to his paper.

Pain of abortion
  When I was in high school, Mom took me to a talk a lady in her early sixties gave. 
  At that time, abortion was never mentioned in polite company, and a few eyebrows were raised in the parish at my being taken along.
  However, Mom stoutly said, 'If she's old enough to bear a baby, she's old enough to know about abortion.'
  So off we went to the talk. The gracious woman giving the talk had a silver swirl chignon and a sad expression in her eyes.

  She spoke to us about an abortion she had as a young woman. After the termination, there had never been a day or night she had not regretted her decision. 
  In her sixties, the grief had become an endless nightmare for her.
She had decided to speak out about the constant and long-term suffering the abortion had caused her.
  She spoke of the annual anniversary depression; the week before the date her daughter's birth had been due, she would begin with nightmares and tears.
  On the day itself, she was never able to go to work, but would stay indoors, grieving.
  After a further week the depression would eventually lift to the point she could go back to work.

  At the end of the talk, she said, 'If only one of you decides not to get an abortion as a result of my sharing my experience, then I will consider that my daughter's death will not have been in vain.'
  On the front doorstep, she looked at me - the youngest of the attendees - and said, 'Never a moment goes by that I don't wonder what my little girl would have looked like.'   
  As her eyes filled with tears, she concluded; 'I'm in my sixties. Only a few years more and then I can meet her when I go to the Father.'

That was just under forty years ago. I often think of that suffering and gracious lady. 
  By now she surely must be with the Father and her daughter. May God's loving Light shine on them both.
  I never forget her, and the deep insight she gave me into abortion; instead of being a quick release from the life-changes pregnancy of necessity brings, it is a step into a never-ending nightmare.
  And I, too, still after these many years collect signatures and try to pass the message of life along . . .