Several years ago I worked in the Women’s Center at a community college. My female boss went on a year’s sabbatical to teach English in China. While she was gone the interim director gave me freedom to decide what pamphlets to put on a display rack and which clippings concerning women would go up on our bulletin board ,etc.
I had also been in a select group who wrote editorials for our hometown newspaper for the past four years, so my name was known to many of the local readers. I am a conservative and that reflected in the columns I wrote. This request pitted my religious and political beliefs against my job, because the department head had a liberal slant on life. A twenty-something young woman kind of slunk into the chair next to my desk and in a hushed voice she whispered to me, “Quick, tell me where I can get an abortion, and I don’t want any backtalk!” It was the dreaded question I hoped I would never hear. I sent her to the county health department, where I thought she would get some counseling.
Thinking about the incident, I wrote an editorial citing childless couples who would dearly love to have a child, and adoption organizations that could help them. The column was placed at the top of the editorial page with a bold headline that would be hard to miss.
A couple of days later my boss lady stopped in the Women’s Center prior to her resuming her job on the following Monday morning. While she was sitting there chatting a couple of her teacher friends came by to say “hello” to her. Then one turned to me and said she had enjoyed reading the editorial that was in the paper. My boss asked what it was about and the other teacher went to get her copy of the newspaper. As my boss sat reading the editorial she grew visibly white. Then she got up and said we’d talk about it on Monday, and left.
Monday morning she asked me to come into her office and said regarding the editorial, “We are to be a referral agency and not state our own views, and did I think I could live with that?” I muttered, “I guess so,” but I couldn’t live with having to give advice to help women get abortions. After a restless night with my conscience, I came back to my boss and told her she had my two-weeks notice because I quit. At that time I kept thinking of the line to a poem, “I have to live with myself and so, I want to be fit for myself to know.”
I thought the Lord would reward me with a new job for taking this noble stand, but it didn’t happen that way. I had a hard time getting another job and ended up working for a temporary agency for a few years. As it turned out, I got to learn a variety of new computer applications without paying for any training. If I had stayed with my job at the Women’s Center I would not have had that opportunity.
