Access to a safe, legal, accessible abortion is a right that is protected in the United States today. Women in this country have the liberty to make the best personal decision for themselves and their families in the event of an unintended pregnancy.
Ideally, all women would have access to contraception and comprehensive sexuality education to prevent unintended pregnancy so that no woman has to make that decision.
Until the day comes when all women are offered comprehensive sexuality education and ready access to contraception and we eliminate the need for abortion, we must protect the right of abortion. This right ensures that women can exercise control of their own bodies by the guidance of their own consciences, morals and circumstances – not the mores of an outside influence.
Today and Tuesday, a national group called the Genocide Awareness Project will be on campus.
This is a group that likens abortion to such human rights atrocities as the holocaust, slavery and the Rwandan genocide. GAP exploits the victims of genocide for political purposes. GAP does not address women’s rights to bodily integrity, to full participation in society or to something beyond second-class citizenship. GAP offers no answers, direction or approach to reducing the need for abortion.
The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one that is neither simple nor mindless, and one that only an individual woman can know is right or wrong for her and her family. Let us not disrespect the oppressed people of our past or the women of our present by engaging in such unsound comparisons as GAP seeks to do. Let us trust and honor women by respecting the difficult decisions that they must make when faced with an unintended pregnancy and by providing them with the means to prevent one.
Megan Frazier is a senior in the college of business.
