Every Saturday morning and afternoon, I teach at an English school right across the street from a hospital. Naturally enough, besides people from the neighborhood, many of the students are doctors, nurses, and their children. I taught a class for another teacher who couldn’t make it to school today.

The student was a female OB/GYN whose daughter was in one of my weekly classes. We had a lot of fun talking about childbirth, midwifery, homebirth vs. hospital birth, etc. etc. Then she said she liked gynecology better than obstetrics, especially surgery. I asked her what kind of surgery. I should have known: abortion. I suddenly felt sick and felt my gorge rise. I wanted to run out of the room and throw up. I had to make an effort not to stare at her hands. Hands that had killed who knows how many babies.

She told me that in the area around the hospital where she works there are a lot of poor people and that there are a lot of unwanted pregnancies that must be terminated. When I told her about volunteer groups/organizations that will take in needy mothers and provide for them till their baby is born and support them afterwards, she said these women don’t deserve any help and shouldn’t be having children. She said what these women needed was not shelter, but education about contraception. She said the mothers (and fathers) are worthless, unproductive fools and will have children just like themselves. Basically, she said it’s better for everyone (including the babies themselves) if the babies are not born. I thought I’d have to turn around and throw up. I’m feeling sick again now as I write this.

I had two more classes after that and then hurried to my friends’ house to babysit the three-year-old twins while my friends went to a concert. Those twins are wonderful little boys. We played together, had dinner, went out for ice cream, washed up and bathed them, then put them to sleep. We prayed together and they conked about before I finished singing through the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed. Each baby is so beautiful, such a miracle. Tonight has been one of the best nights I’ve had this year.

The thing about Japanese people is that know abortion is murder and speak of it as such in their everyday language. They speak of “letting down the baby” instead of “aborting a foetus.” They don’t even bother to pretend the baby is not human yet. There are special shrines and graveyards for aborted babies. The doctor today talked of them as babies, too. I feel sick.

There’s nothing I want more than to get married and have lots of babies. There are so many good Christian couples all over the world, some of whom are my close friends, who cannot have children. Meanwhile, babies all over the world are being massacred every day for the sins of their parents.

The money I earn from today’s class is blood money. I think I’m going to put it all in the offering. I can’t bear to keep it.

I want to ask the receptionist not to set up any more appointments for classes with that doctor. I don’t know if I could stand it. But if I could be instrumental in her salvation, I don’t think I ought to avoid her. My Christian piano teacher told me once that she never, ever turned away a student or told one to quit, no matter how awful the student was, because she considered each one to be sent from God, and that it was her responsibility not only to teach them piano but to witness to them as best she could. After our talk today, I have a feeling that doctor won’t be requesting any more of my classes, though. I almost hope she won’t.

Today’s class brought back childhood memories of wanting to start a Christian orphanage and pregnant mothers’ home in Tokyo. There is still not one single one here yet. But there are so many things to do and I can’t do them all.

This is the first time in my life I’ve spent an hour with someone who kills people for a living. As I walked home from work this evening, I called my mother on my cell phone and told her about the class, crying uncontrollably and hyperventilating. Evil incarnate, so well-dressed, well-educated, intelligent, and actually nice. But Satan is beautiful.

Come to think of it, putting the money for today’s class in the offering is meaningless. Her daughter’s tuition is blood money, too. So I’m earning money made from the killing of babies instead of going to our church’s weekly Bible history class on Saturday mornings. I attended that class for years. It is one of the things I used to enjoy most.

I’m an accomplice to the massacre of innocents. I wonder how many other doctors and nurses at that English school are abortionists. I don’t want to know. But even if I quit this job to avoid getting blood money, the money I earn will always tainted in some way, somewhere, somehow. There’s no avoiding it, unless I go off and become a hermit somewhere. But even then, I’d be an accomplice by virtue of not working to stop the massacre. I know I have to be salt and light, but I feel like my salt is blood-stained and my light is too small to make any difference.