My Sister Rocks!

I spoke to my sister Sarah today, and she told me a very interesting story.

Apparently, several kids wore anti-choice shirts to her school last week, complete with Bible verses (though I'm curious as to which verses they chose, considering the Bible doesn't discuss abortion). This week, a few of Sarah's friends wore pro-choice shirts in retaliation, and included slogans about keeping one's religion away from their bodies.

The pro-choice kids were suspended. The anti-choice kids were not.

The rationale for this was, apparently, that the pro-choice shirts were made using fabric markers, which counts as writing on one's clothes, and is therefore banned by the dress code. The anti-choice shirts, however, were professionally made.

I'm still in the process of collecting information on this, so I can't confirm any information via school officials until I make a few calls tomorrow. But I just wanted to use this opportunity to address a few people.

First off, I'm truly skeptical that the pro-life kids came up with this idea on their own. Making some shirts out of a few Wal-Mart tees and some puffy paint/fabric markers is one thing; wearing professionally made shirts is another thing altogether, and suggests to me that these kids were either encouraged by their parents or acting as part of some incendiary group as a reaction against that guy who got shot outside a high school last month. I mean, how many high school kids do you know who pool their allowance in order to buy religiously motivated tee-shirts? Why isn't the school talking to the parents of these kids?

Secondly, I say to the school district: this is amateur bullshit. Suspending one politically active group of kids over another— are you freaking kidding me? Are you asking for public ridicule? It's obvious to anyone with a brain that if any of these kids sue you, the mainstream media are going to turn Struthers into a circus. It doesn't even matter how the trial goes, whether or not the school is held responsible— because if there ever is a trial, this makes the entire city of Struthers look like backwards, ignorant extremists. How could you ever let it get this far? Why wouldn't you simply suspend both groups, or leave both alone? Why did you have to make such a stupid, obvious screw-up?

But mad props go to my sister Sarah, who, by the way, doesn't seem particularly pro-choice to me. In our conversations together, she's always been very against abortion. But it clearly upset her that the school is so blatantly playing favorites, and that her friends are being punished for standing up for their beliefs, and so she told me this today, over the phone, as she baked a Halloween-themed cake.

More kids ought to be like Sarah. More kids ought to be able to look at a situation and say, "Well, while I agree with the sentiment, the ways in which this was executed have really been unfair and unjustified." I'm so proud of her— at sixteen, she's clearly already a critical thinker, and she's clearly able to make up her own mind (it can't be easy being pro-life when your own grandmother had an abortion) and to recognize when other people might be right, even if she disagrees with them in other ways.

So the real hero of the day is not the pro-choice movement or the pro-life movement; it's Sarah, and how smart and brave she's been in standing up for what she believes is fair.