My best friend was a virgin until university

Dear Pastor,

I am 19 years old and I come from a very rural district. My best friend comes from the same area. We went to the same primary and high schools.

We were always very good friends. She was not interested in boys and neither was I. In high school, we moved together and people used to say that we must be lesbians, but that was not the case. We had simply decided that we had to work hard and go on to university.

My parents didn't have the money to send me to university right away, but my best friend got through, and I joined her the following year.

We don't attend the same church, but when I started going to the branch of the church I'm from, the guys there were very interested in me. One of them, the son of the church's leading elder, wanted to get close to me, but I told him I wasn't interested in a relationship. I said we could be friends, and he accepted that.

My best friend, on the other hand, fell in love with a guy who also attends university. She is now pregnant, but she doesn't want to keep the baby. I was shocked when she told me. She said he forced her to have sex with him - it happened the second time they went out.

Her parents don't even know that she's pregnant. The guy's parents are willing to give him money to help her terminate the pregnancy, and she says she wants to do it because she doesn't want to fall behind in school. She also told me she hates him.

She was a virgin before she met this guy. Now, she's scared and hurt, and I'm scared too - especially of what these guys are capable of.

What advice would you give her?

R.C

Dear R.C.,

I do not support abortion on demand. You say that this guy forced your best friend to have sex with him, but she didn't say that he raped her. If he had raped her, that would be a different matter.

I understand forcing to mean that he persuaded her to have sex with him. She should have known that she could have taken the morning-after Pill. She didn't, so she should carry the pregnancy and she should inform her parents right away that she is pregnant.

They would be disappointed in her, but they wouldn't kill her. And I rather doubt that they would encourage her to have an abortion.

Continue to be her good friend, stand with her, encourage her not to give up, but don't encourage her to have an abortion.

Pastor