Tiny You by Jennifer L. Holland

Author:Jennifer L. Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520295865
Publisher: University of California Press

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While the very public space of federally funded schools was always a primary concern of anti-abortion activists, they looked as well to politicize private space—or as activists put it, to instill “values” in their children. Some of the most important organizing of children took place in the most “private” of spaces: the home. For adults who had committed their free time to a political movement, it was only natural to incorporate those politics into their home life. These pro-life lessons came in both quotidian and extraordinary forms. In their homes and in their communities of like-minded white people, activists made opposition to abortion into more than a political cause. It became a lifestyle for many children of conservative parents.

Early on, anti-abortion parents probably talked to their children about abortion using literature made for adults. But in the 1980s, parents had new tools for those everyday talks. One example of this material is a 1986 pamphlet targeting young children, entitled “You Are Special.” Throughout the pamphlet, the author asked children to connect with the fetus they once were. In a section titled “Tiny You,” the pamphlet explained, “You began as a single cell when a sperm from your dad and an egg from your mom joined together. At that moment, everything that was you was already there.” The author linked children’s lives to abortion: “Sometimes parents get confused and scared when they find out they’re going to have a baby. . . . They don’t know their baby is alive. They choose abortion. Abortion means that they force their baby to die when it is still growing and living in its mother’s womb. At abortion clinics babies die before they have a chance to be born.”56 Compelling the child to envision his or her own potential death, this pamphlet pushed the young reader to identify with all aborted fetuses.

Beyond pamphlets, Christian publishers and pro-life distributers began marketing a number of books parents could read to their children about sex and, implicitly or explicitly, abortion.57 Virginia Evers’s Heritage House sold many of these books to pro-life consumers. Books targeted at younger children included Why Boys and Girls Are Different, Where Do Babies Come From?, Before I Was Born, and How Did God Make Me? Offerings for parents of older children included How You Are Changing, Sex and the New You, and Love, Sex and God. All formatted to help parents answer children’s questions about sex, these books offered age-appropriate biology lessons along with conservative lessons on gender and sexuality. Promotional material for How Did God Make Me? said the book would allow “your son or daughter [to] discover exactly what life is like in the womb.” Before I Was Born told children “why God made boys’ and girls’ bodies different” and explained “God’s plan for loving marriages and families.” According to Heritage House, these educational materials helped parents move beyond the “sweaty palms and lump-in-the-throat approach.”58

All these books, published in the 1980s and 1990s, included some points in common. First, children’s bodies and personalities came from God.

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