Strange Animals by Chad Kultgen

there so that what she was about to do couldn’t be traced back to her personal computer. She sat down and began to craft a rudimentary website. The website was a single page of text that read:
    I am a twenty-six-year-old female. The direction in which this country is headed, in terms of its treatment of women, is deplorable, and I feel is due in large part to the influence of the religious right in the guise of the pro-life movement. In an effort to expose the hypocrisy in that movement, I would like to extend the following public challenge to the 157 million Americans who identify as supporters of the pro-life ideology.
    I’m currently eight weeks pregnant. I live in a state that allows me up until the end of the second trimester of my pregnancy to decide whether or not I want to have this baby. At the bottom of this page you’ll see a link for donations. If the donations reach 100 million dollars by the end of my second trimester, then I’ll have the baby, give it up for adoption, and every cent of that 100 million dollars will be put in a trust fund to be released to the child when he or she turns twenty-one. I’ll keep none of the money for myself, so if I am to be vilified in this process, it can’t be for that. If the 100 million dollar goal is not met by the end of my second trimester, any and all donations that were received will be refunded, and I will have an abortion. Mathematically this means that every pro-life American only needs to donate about 64 cents to save this child’s life.
    What I aim to prove in doing this is that the conservative movement in America doesn’t actually care about the life ofa child. They care about controlling the lives and decisions of women.
    As Karen typed the last period, she looked over her shoulder to see if anyone near her might have been paying attention to what she was typing. She realized her paranoia was unwarranted, but the possible ramifications of what she was doing seemed so enormous to her that she could already feel their weight. She read over what she had written, and without publishing the page live onto the Internet, she saved it to a USB storage device, which she unplugged and dropped in her purse. Then she purged the computer workstation of any evidence of her project and left the computer lab. As she walked back across campus to her car, all she could think about was the storage device in her purse. She felt almost as though she were smuggling drugs across a border or carrying a loaded weapon in public. She told herself that she’d think about this for a few days before making it live. Once she put this out in the world, she knew, there was no taking it back, and once again she was scared.

chapter     
    ten
    James entered one of the meeting rooms of Woodstone Church a few minutes before seven on a Thursday night. At the end of the prior Sunday’s service, Pastor Preston mentioned to the entire congregation that he would be holding the inaugural meeting of a new proactive outreach group he had decided to name the Anointed. He explained that his goal for this outreach group was to be as involved in the community as possible, and to help spread the word of Christ to nonbelievers through action. He extended an open invitation to anyone who wanted to know more.
    James took a seat along with a few other people, only one of whom he recognized from church, in a small grouping of chairs directly in front of Pastor Preston. Pastor Preston looked at his watch and said, “Okay, folks, thanks for coming out tonight. It does my heart good to see that there’s real interest in helping spread the word. So many Christians think they can come tochurch on Sunday and that’ll make them right with God, but real Christians know you have to praise his name every day, all day. And let’s not forget that all of you are here tonight because it’s part of God’s plan. He wants you here just as much as you want to