{"id":128188,"date":"2016-10-12T07:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-10-12T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=128188"},"modified":"2016-10-12T00:29:03","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T04:29:03","slug":"forty-five-years-ago-helped-a-good-friend-kill-someone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/forty-five-years-ago-helped-a-good-friend-kill-someone\/","title":{"rendered":"Forty-five years ago, I helped a good friend kill someone"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019m a killer. I live with that. Forty-five years ago I killed someone. Actually I helped a good friend kill someone. At that time in Texas, a girl who was under the age of twenty-one could not obtain a legal abortion without the consent of her parents. Or her husband. The girl, named Mary as far as you\u2019re concerned, was a very good friend I met at church, a very conservative and fundamentalist protestant church. She was somewhat naive and not ready for the world into which she had been thrust after high school. The people with whom she had been living had moved out of town so she and her sister moved in with my roommate and me on a temporary basis.<\/p>\n

One summer night she asked me to take her to a drive-in movie. I knew something was up because she had never asked that before. We sat quietly for about fifteen minutes after the show started then she started gushing tears. She said, \u201cI’m sorry\u201d over and over and over. I had no idea why. Finally, she told me she was pregnant.<\/p>\n

\"Brad<\/a>

Brad Baccom<\/p><\/div>\n

She explained that she began dating a guy she had a huge crush on and soon she found herself expecting his child. She said she was sorry for letting me down because I had been such a good friend to her and cared for her. We started talking about her options.<\/p>\n

She had not told the child\u2019s father and had no intention of doing so. Apparently, he had already dumped her. The thought of having a baby out of wedlock in the early 1970s society of southeast Texas in which we lived was unacceptable. With no parents around and her guardians being staunch conservative Christians, an approved abortion was out of the question. For me – a former Catholic – an abortion under any circumstance was out of the question. So what to do?<\/p>\n

Mary was my friend, one of my few true friends. Although I had no romantic inclinations toward my friend, I offered to marry her so the child would have a name. She refused my offer. I pleaded with her for weeks to have the child and give the child up for adoption. I offered to pay all the expenses and help her find a suitable family for the child. She refused. She was determined that she would have an abortion. And she needed my help. Being a fairly new convert to Christianity, my love for my friend was stronger than my faith. Mary had a plan.<\/p>\n

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