We were curious just what would go down at this year’s National Right to Life Convention, held right in our backyard at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center. So I spent a few hours Friday afternoon chatting up attendees, listening to presentations and rifling through some questionable merchandise. Among the things I learned: Tiny brass fetuses can be functional and flirty jewelry (though I was a little disappointed there were no earrings), and a comic strip about the adventures of an unborn fetus isn’t nearly as funny as it sounds.
But listening to the conversations in a sea of pear-shaped women waving miniature American flags, there were some oddly contradictory sentiments for people committed to preserving life, especially if they involved medical science or people praying to Mecca. Here are some of the strangest bits of conversations overheard during my time there.
* During an intricate discussion of our foreign policy among men who were considering running for the U.S. Senate: “I’d probably say let our government’s assassination teams handle it.”
* One pissed-off Texan who thinks Sam Brownback is just a little soft on the Middle East: “The perfect America would be if Texas wasn’t in America. Because then Texas would be perfect. Y'all need to get your guns out of Texas’ face and let Texas do what it wants.”
* Old politico advising the young: “You go into politics. You don’t have to care what the people say. All that matters is what the good book says.”
* A woman berating some poor balding sap kneeling on the carpet before a priest leaning back in an armchair, Godfather-style: “Everything you’ve said to the pastor has been a lie. Why can’t you just tell the truth? Why do you keep deceiving the pastor?”
* Said by an obese man with no sense of irony five feet from the Terri Schiavo table: “I just don’t believe in the heart transplant. All it’s going to do is just keep you alive. That’s it! You’re not going to get any better.”
* “The perfect America would be if everyone had a gun.”
-- Peter Rugg
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