HOLLAND, Mich. — Growing up in this small town near the western edge of Michigan, Christy Berghoef learned to live by a simple rule.
"To be Christian is to be Republican is to be 'pro-life,'" she said recently, sitting in a renovated shed-turned-office behind her house on the 40-acre farm of willows and gladiolus where she was raised. "All else makes you a 'baby killer.'"
Berghoef abided those harsh judgments. As a child, she prayed for abortions to end. In her teens, she marched in anti-abortion vigils and carried signs at protests. After college, she found a job on Capitol Hill for her Republican congressman, where she was recruited to be a legislative aide on anti-abortion law.
