Adventures in Fetustown

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.