1. Fargo, North Dakota—Not long ago, in a city far, far away from almost everything, there was founded an abortion clinic called the Fargo Women’s Health Organization.

A little later came an antiabortion counseling center, which its supporters named the Fargo-Moorhead Women’s Help and Caring Connection, Inc.

The abortion clinic obtained a temporary injunction and is seeking a permanent one, barring the antiabortion group from using its current name. The abortion clinic contends that the Help and Caring Connection “used deceptive advertising and other practices to lure women in so it could convince them not to have abortions,” according to the AP story.

The abortion clinic’s attorney claimed the antiabortion center “chose its name to confuse pregnant women into thinking they were dealing with an abortion clinic,” the article continues, and said that the center’s newspaper advertising is deceptive in that it “does not make it clear that the center does not perform abortions.”

Now, maybe there’s something in the water these days that makes pregnant women stupid or more gullible than they have been in the past. Maybe the names of the two clinics sound more alike to those who know about such things than they do to me. Maybe a pregnant woman hell-bent on getting an abortion, who walked into the wrong building by mistake, wouldn’t have the brains to know she’d goofed and would think she’d had an abortion even though she had not.

Still, what I would have asked the abortion clinic spokesperson is: “How does it hurt you if a woman talks to the antiabortion group?”

It seems like a logical question. Is it the loss of income they fear? The political repercussions if fewer women obtain abortions? Surely it’s not the pro-abortionist view that a decision to give birth is irreversible; it’s the abortion that can’t be undone and that can be performed at leisure any time over a period of months. So what is it?

The truth, of course, is that it’s all of the above. Abortion clinics bring in big bucks. The political clout of proabortionists would be diminished if fewer abortions were performed. And often a thoughtful decision to not abort is hard for a pro-abortionist to reverse.

But no one asked the question.

2. Toledo, Ohio—Sarabeth is the cute, 11-year-old daughter of Concepcion Eason, an abortion rights activist and former assistant director of a Toledo abortion clinic. Sarabeth, who has barely entered puberty, likes abortion because it is “safe and legal,” and because of her public display of her beliefs, she is no longer welcome at St. Agnes School.

She appeared on TV in January in a demonstration against proposed Ohio legislation that would mandate notification of a minor girl’s parents before she received an abortion. She also signed her name to a newspaper ad celebrating the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

The spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Toledo puts it nicely: “Clearly, one removes oneself from the Catholic and Christian community when one advocates, finances, supports, or encourages another person to participate in abortion.”

Sarabeth has attended parochial schools since kindergarten but will go elsewhere for the sixth grade this fall, saying she refuses to pledge to keep her views on abortion private or to write a letter to her principal saying she does not believe in abortion, as St. Agnes’ administrator asked her to do.

“It will give them the idea they have the right to take away my freedom of wanting to believe in abortion or not,” she told the AP in typically confused 11-year-old language, “and make them feel they could do that to other children, which they shouldn’t be able to do.”

All this in a child whose friends snarf down Fruit Roll-Ups and would die for a date with Prince.

Concepcion Eason says, “We’re angry and disappointed with the Church. I believe in freedom of choice, freedom of speech. They can’t tell us what we cannot say in public. I am teaching my daughter to be what she wants to be and fight for whatever causes she wants to.”

Here’s what I would have asked Concepcion (o unlikely, unhappy name!): “As a member of NOW”—I’m guessing her—”would you tolerate another member who advocated lower pay for women than for men? As a gay rights activist”—again, a guess—”would you put up with a member who held that homosexuality is a sin? No? Then why are you surprised that the Catholic Church, one of whose oldest, deepest, and most self-evident tenets is the prohibition of abortion, looks askance at your daughter’s pro-abortion views? Why do you want to be a Catholic? Why do you think you are a Catholic? Why do you want your daughter to attend a Catholic school? And what would happen to Sarabeth’s ‘freedom of choice, freedom of speech’ if she switched horses and signed an anti-abortion ad?”

And to the Church: “If Sarabeth, a child, and obviously her mother’s mouthpiece, has, as you say, removed herself from the Catholic and Christian community, what of Concepcion and all the others? Are we talking ‘excommunication’ here?”

This is what I would have asked.