Our girl Scootaloo 1 of 3

by Cozy Mark IV

Ch. 15 Hard Choices

Our Girl Scootaloo

by Cozy Mark IV & Jan McNeville

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-made work of prose. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the property of Hasbro. Please support the official release

Chapter 15: Hard Choices

"Um, remind me again why we're doing this?" Melissa asked nervously.

The cheerleading squad had picked Wednesday morning as the warm-up for their protest, and groups of four girls each were standing at the main hallway intersections with signs protesting the removal of sex ed. To ensure they got attention as well as doing some good, each group had a plastic punch bowl filled to the brim with condoms, and as the bell rang, they were soon mobbed by high-schoolers eager for free access to what many stores kept behind a locked counter.

The atmosphere of relief and plenty lasted almost five minutes before principal Gray found out what the commotion was about. He only had time to confront one group and steal their supplies before the class change was done, but Josie had briefed them to expect this, and with each successive class change of the day, the cheerleaders were out in force, spreading the word about the protest on Monday and handing out more free contraception. With each class change, Principal Gray would catch another group or two, and rail at them, threatening suspension or worse, and as the day went on his temper did not improve. By the time the last class rolled around he made an angry announcement over the PA that anyone else caught distributing 'sex aids' would be arrested on the spot by Officer Hogan and hauled out of the school in handcuffs.

When the announcement ended, Josie smiled across her desk at Melissa and Scootaloo who both looked worried.

"We better not do this again," Melissa whispered. "I don't want to get arrested!"

Josie just kept smiling as she kidded her. "Oh, don't look so worried, they're just like the fuzzy ones."

To the surprise of both of them, Melissa blushed bright red and buried her nose in her book.

Scootaloo wondered, but continued anyway. "Josie, I know we've done some good today, we've handed out hundreds of condoms, and with any luck we may have saved someone's future, but I've never seen the principal this angry! I think he meant what he said."

Josie's smile still didn't falter. "I sure hope he did, I'm counting on it. I suspect that before the day is out someone will remind him that there aren't enough cuffs for all the cheerleaders, and that we could still defy his threat if we wanted to."

Melissa put down her book, now looking very worried as she quietly whispered. "You want us to get arrested?!"

Scootaloo wrung her hands. "I don't know about this, Josie..."

"Stop and think about this. We tried talking with Gray, and he blew us off. We wrote letters and tried talking to the higher-ups in the administration, and they blew us off. Nobody cares what we think, and the usual channels aren't working, so that just leaves us the last option. The Court Of Public Opinion."

"The court of what?"

"It means if we want anything to change, we have to get the word out and make people care. A bunch of cheerleaders advocating for sex-ed is amusing, but it's not newsworthy. An entire cheerleading team getting arrested on trumped-up charges by a corrupt principal and hauled out of school in handcuffs, that's newsworthy. Remember how we drilled on what we would say today when confronted? We're trying to provoke Mr. Gray into doing something stupid. Provided we can get some news crews to be waiting in front of the school at lunch on Monday, this whole city will see exactly what kind of a person we're dealing with."

Scootaloo still looked confused. "But Monday at lunch... That's the protest. I thought we were going to be in it? I'm almost done with my outfit."

"Sorry, Scoot, but you won't be needing your outfit. The squad is going to be the focus of the protest, by standing up for what's right and very publicly showing what pastor Gray thinks of women."

"But getting arrested?" Melissa seemed to be trying to sink into the floor. "I don't know if I can do that..."

"Exactly." Josie deadpanned. "You're a teenage girl, just like the rest of us. He knows we're 'good girls,' that we have clean records, and that we don't want any trouble. Like most bullies, he's using that against us by changing the rules."

Her voice took on an authoritative note as she imitated his voice. "'You better sit down and shut up little girl. If you don't do as I say, I'll humiliate you in front of the whole school. You'll be all alone in front of everyone, they'll laugh at you, and then your parents will have to leave work early to come get you. They'll have to tell their bosses that their little girl got arrested at school. You want that? No? Then you better do what I say. You had better put up with the removal of sex ed.'" Her voice became more ragged as she went on. "You better not say anything when a friend gets pregnant and her life falls apart because I kept her ignorant. You better not tell anyone when the deacon rapes your childhood best friend and lies about it."

Josie struggled to calm down as Melissa and Scootaloo hung their heads in shame.

"I'm sorry Josie. I... I know we have to do this, it's... it's just hard."

Josie reached out and put a hand on Scootaloo's shoulder. "I know. But if we work together we'll not only be okay, we can fix this whole mess. Do you know what law Gray plans on charging us with to arrest us?"

They shook their heads.

"I don't think he does, either. If one or two others brought condoms to school again he would probably bluster and rant, but good sense would keep him from risking false imprisonment charges. We have to get him so mad that he does something reckless and indefensible like arresting the entire squad. And we have to do it in front of cameras; news, cell phone, the more the better. Do you remember when the squad went to competition for State and Scootaloo's fathers drove?"

"Yeah," Melissa nodded.

"In order to transport or authorize medical attention for a student, there's a form that parents have to sign authorizing teachers and/or chaperones to have emergency custody. I have copies of forms for you from Ms. Chisholm's computer, so if you get arrested with us, Scoot's dads can take both of you home, assuming we're released on recognizance. So your folks don't have to leave work early."

"...You've really thought this out. And what about your folks?"

"Seriously? My parents have an arrest record longer than some serial killers. Lots of college protests, apparently. It was my Mom who suggested I get the emergency-custody forms from Ms. C. and have them ready for you."

"So if you get arrested, your folks are okay with that?"

"...I think they may actually have had a blank page waiting in my baby book for this day. Mom might even cry. Parents!" That brought Josie's smile back, for a second.

"So while everyone else is getting dressed up for the protest, we'll be getting arrested in front of the school?" Scootaloo asked with some trepidation.

"If everything goes well, then yes. At practice tonight we're going to go over what we can and can't say to him on Monday. We can't use bad language and we definitely can't say anything negative about religion, but we still have to have enough material to get him really mad. If he keeps his cool on Monday, or if he doesn't arrest us, that makes us look like spoiled children and him look like the level-headed adult. For this to work, we have to reveal him for what he is."

The weekend was a chaotic storm of organizing, sewing and trying to spread the word to anyone who hadn't heard already. Christina, Kevin and Scootaloo kept the sewing machines running with barely a break, and the pile of costumes grew, despite the considerable number of students stopping by to offer encouragement and pick up their own outfits.

Sunday afternoon saw the entire squad knocking on doors and distributing the remaining outfits, reminiscent of a 'get out the vote' drive, and it was between runs that Josie caught up with Scootaloo and Melissa at the house with some important news. They all met up in Scootaloo's bedroom as Josie closed the door.

"It's Amelia. She's had a miscarriage."

Scootaloo looked shocked, while Melissa wore a relieved smile. "Thank goodness. What happened?"

"Apparently she just started feeling awful and her parents had to rush her to the hospital. There was no time to keep it quite or cover anything up; they tried to keep the social worker from figuring it out, but she got Amelia alone long enough to discover the truth. They sent the DNA sample out for testing, and they could have the results back this week."

Scootaloo slowly put it together. "So if we were right, the Deacon isn't going to be able to duck this. He'll be going down for statutory rape."

"I'm just glad Amelia got out of this so easily." Melissa breathed. "No secret trip out to the clinic and no traumatic birth to a child she couldn't possibly take care of."

"Yup. Good thing we got her those prenatal vitamins when we did." Josie smiled.

Scootaloo puzzled over that for a moment before her eyes went wide. "You did this?!"

Melissa put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Scoot. This was the best way this mess could have ended."

"Hey, don't look at me." Josie feigned innocence. "I just got her a jar of prenatal vitamins. If it just happened that the first two were special ones that solved all her problems, why, I wouldn't know anything about that."

"But... How did you even get...?"

"Oh, I don't know." Melissa replied thoughtfully. "We might have found a local dealer of street drugs and persuaded him to expand his offering. We could have looked up the formula online to make something out of household chemicals."

Josie stepped in. "We could have ordered RU-486 from a shady online pharmacy like the kind that peddles off-brand and Canadian Viagra just as easily to gullible teenage boys. We might even have found a sympathetic local pharmacist, or a pharmacy tech who was selling on the side. There are so many possibilities and, you know, I wouldn't know the first thing about any of them," she finished with a smile.

"You really think you did the right thing?" Scootaloo asked, still not sure herself.

"Well, thanks to her parents and her school, she really only had three options left. She could take a long trip to a clinic that would let her parents hide the identity of the father until he raped again, she, with her third-grade understanding of the world, could give vaginal or C-section birth to an eight-pound baby, or she could feel sick for an evening, go to sleep at the hospital, and have all her problems disappear." Josie finished.

Melissa followed up with a scowl. "I'm particularly keen on the part where the Deacon who did this disappears."

"But...still. I thought you said keeping abortion legal was about a woman's choice and that no man or politician should have the right to make that choice for her."

"I did. The thing is, Scoot, there's a difference between a woman and a mentally challenged woman with the cognitive capacity of a child. If disabled minors lack the capacity to legally consent to sex, they also lack the ability to make such a difficult and important choice. That, and you're assuming something else about my being pro-choice." Josie sighed. "You know I'm a Christian, for a given value of 'Christian,' and that a lot of people from my faith are not cool with the whole 'killing babies' thing."

"Yeah. Amelia's parents are as anti-choice, pro-life...whatever it's called as it's possible to get."

"Despite the fact that they did call your airport, just not you, about a ride. Apparently someone implied that you couldn't be trusted not to reveal their hypocrisy." Melissa elbowed Josie in the ribs.

"It did create a nasty delay while the airport director called a lot of fifty-year-old pilots to see who'd be available, didn't it?" Josie asked parenthetically. "I'm not going to claim that I have all the answers about what God does or doesn't think about when life begins. Hell, I'm not even going to bother with the whole 'is it a fetus, is it a baby' question, because to me, that's not the issue. Choice exists not because fucking should never have consequences or because sometimes murderin' a fetus for shits n' giggles is a woman's God-given right. Choice exists because there are times, awful as it is to even think about, when death in the womb is more merciful than a life out here."

"And you're qualified to make that choice?" Scootaloo asked uncertainly, still struggling to take this all in.

"Not in the slightest. I'm a teenage-fucking-girl myself, you think I'd make any better of a choice if it'd happened to me? I can't promise I wouldn't have kept the kid, looked into open adoption or even taken a running start at raising the kid myself. Thing is, Amelia's parents didn't even consider that, and Amelia isn't capable of making the decision any more than she's capable of raising the kid herself."

Josie sighed. "That, and while I was looking up the laws on open adoptions, rape of minors, all that mess, I found something a little dark in this state's parental laws. If Amelia had kept the baby, gotten a paternity test -which is inevitable, by the way, when a mentally challenged person names her statutory rapist, the state we live in doesn't consider maternal rape adequate grounds to terminate paternal parental rights, at least not without a very lengthy trial during which the rapist babydaddy can block adoption, demand visitation in prison, all kinds of nastiness. That, plus the fact that the average sentence for statutory rape would let that psycho deacon out right about the time his legal offspring would be the age he seems to prefer...well...I just couldn't take the chance that either Amelia'd have a girl or he wouldn't be too picky about gender."

Scootaloo had taken to pacing back an forth, but she stopped and shook her head at that. "But her parents were taking her for an abortion anyway!"

"Yeah, and that's too much of a crapshoot, too. It isn't like Amelia has Down syndrome and actually looks disabled. She's got Traumatic Brain Injury and she looks just like everybody else. You'd have to talk with her for a hell of a lot longer than the mandatory pre-abortion counseling session's average length to realize she wasn't entirely capable of consent, but it wouldn't take five minutes to know that she wanted that baby. Odds are fair that the clinic would have told her parents to go pound sand. And if first one and then another did that, while I'm sure they'd eventually find somebody to get it done, by that time it'd really, really be too late. It's ironic, but the same 'are you sure you want to terminate this pregnancy' lecture bullshit their own side got passed into law just about everywhere was actually the biggest thing in Amelia's parents' way."

Josie sighed again. "If there was a way to get the kid born without traumatizing her and off to a good family where his or her evil rapist dad would never find her, that'd be one thing, but my parents tried for hours to talk her folks out of the abortion and ...no dice. That, and the whole 'inability to admit a DNA sample from products of conception aborted across state lines' in court thing was actually a selling point to them about getting it done! They didn't want their church to 'get caught up in some scandal!' They're so caught up in what people think of them that they were willing to hide their daughter's rapist! I couldn't take the chance that the kid would grow up with them for custodial grandparents, either."

Scootaloo had given up pacing and sat down hard in her computer chair with look of profound sadness. "Still...it was a hell of a thing to do."

"You don't hear me arguing. I thoroughly expect to have a number of serious conversations with The Big Guy Upstairs for what I did, and it might even be a one-way ticket to the hot place. But even if you could absolutely, positively guarantee that I'm going to hell for...solving the problem, I'd consider slapping a Return-to-Sender label on that kid's soul to keep them out of a world like this well worth it." And then the bravado, the bold fix-it-all, know-it-all attitude Josie wore like armor...somehow, it broke. "I just...well...I didn't quite realize it would hurt this much," she sniffed, looking more like a kicked puppy than Scoot had ever seen, even that day when they found out about Amelia. "Amelia apologized, to me that her baby had gone to be with God. She'd wanted me to be the godmother."

"Godmothers protect children," Melissa reminded gently, patting her friend's shoulder. "I'd say you're qualified."

"...But...does that make sense, Scoot? I know what I did was awful...but you can't necessarily tell me I wasn't right."

Scootaloo slowly nodded. "I guess you are right. I just don't know if I would have the guts to do what you did."

Josie's sigh was ragged with unshed tears. "Well, I didn't have much choice, did I? It was my job to take care of her, and I didn't catch this until now. I have to take care of her." She hung her head and Scootaloo saw a tear running down her cheek. "Because if I don't, it looks like no one else will."

Comments

[Rubystars]

If you (the author) believe in a "woman's right to choose" and that girl (unfit mother or not, she had a family to help her raise the child), wanted her baby, and was willing to take prenatal vitamins to help her baby to be as healthy as possible, what possible justification could there be for poisoning her? You do realize that takes the choice away from her right? Even if she should never have gotten pregnant in the first place, and it's legal for her to make the decision to kill her own baby, it definitely isn't the right of some random friend to make the decision for her, especially giving potentially dangerous medication to her without her or her parents' consent.

This is honestly the worst story I've ever read.

You take every opportunity to demonize conservative Christians. You portray us as if we're all a bunch of monsters just waiting to bully/intimidate/beat up/harm/drive to suicide anyone who's different, and yet you have a "progressive" character in this chapter force an abortion on a special needs woman against her will and try to justify that.

I don't believe in bullying/being mean/harming other people. Most other conservative Christians I know don't either. Most of us have normal, friendly interactions with people of different faiths (or the lack thereof), homosexual people, etc. We're not all waiting in line to beat up a liberal, or scream mean things. I was still giving this story a chance until this chapter but this.... is just insane. I can't see a good girl like Scootaloo going along with this and thinking that it's ok to force an abortion on someone without their consent.

Obviously the deacon was even more evil in this scenario and of course he should be put away permanently or even castrated so he doesn't hurt any more children, but that doesn't justify what your characters did either.

[Pecan Crisp]

3372878
Way to hone in on just the points that support you, I guess. If you think letting a mentally-third-grade high school student have a baby in a state where her rapist could get custody of said baby is okay, then more power to you.

Personally, I think all of these options were fucked up, because the situation itself is fucked up. However, I think Josie took the best option.