"I'm Pro-Life, and I'm Contagious!"

It all started at the gym. There I was, on the arc trainer, gasping for breath and sweating out of all of my pores while a cadre of wall-mounted television screens simultaneously taught me how to redecorate my bedroom for pennies, reminded me that the faux alligator skin clutch was a limited time offer, and served up Judge Roberts to the judiciary committee to be drawn and quartered (or at least that's what one might assume happens at a confirmation hearing, judging from the expressions on the committee's faces.)

Next to me, a friendly brunette in a pair of black jogging pants and a Clemson t-shirt beat her own heart-pumping cadence on the other arc trainer. We engaged in idle chitchat between ragged gasps, discovering that we were both teachers, commiserating over our shared pain in exercise, and swapping dessert recipes guaranteed to nullify, in two bites, all of our excruciating hours on the cardio equipment.

I'd been paying scant attention to the judiciary proceedings, being more occupied with my own selfish concerns, like getting oxygen to my brain, but at a lull in the conversation, I started reading the closed captions and realized that the inevitable Roe v. Wade discussion had started. I commented as much to my new buddy.

"I know!" came the indignant reply, "Can you believe we're still arguing about this?" I pointed out that until the vast majority agreed on the issue one way or the other, it would always be a source of conflict. "But I can't believe any senator would vote for a judge who would tell a woman what to do with her body!" She went on for a while in this vein, in the conspiratorial tones of someone who does not, for a moment, consider that her views would not be shared by anyone of even moderate intelligence. Not wanting to deceive her, I mildly remarked, "Well, I believe that the unborn are human beings, too, so to my way of thinking, a pregnant woman has two lives to consider, not just one."

I thought I used a conversational tone, a non-threatening tone, a tone intended to assure all hearers that I was not in any way aligned with the crazies who shoot doctors and blow up clinics. (By the way, how insane is that? "Let's kill all the abortionists! That'll teach em about the sanctity of life!") But in the world of Clemson-girl, claiming to be pro-life must be roughly on par with announcing that you're a leper. Her arc trainer ground to a halt, she made a guttural grunt of surprise, and without

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