Summary

This section includes two chapters: “Holy Innocents” and “Death Warrant.” These are the last two chapters of the third part called “The Hammer.” “Holy Innocents” starts with Edna Mae’s perspective, and Dawn pleading with her mother not to attend a vigil. Edna Mae has renewed her zeal for Christianity and the pro-life movement. She has stopped taking pills, joined the Pentecostal church, and enrolled in a nurse’s aide program. On September 13th, the date of the vigil in Cleveland honoring “PREBORN HOLY INNOCENTS MURDERED BY ABORTION,” she wakes her children, and Dawn is nervous something will happen (429). But she feels compelled to take care of her younger siblings.

Once in Cleveland, they join other protestors on sidewalks in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic. On the street TV crews start to film. Edna Mae kneels and starts to...