As a representative of the Tufts chapter of Voices for Choice (VOX), a five-year-old, established on-campus organization, I feel that I have a responsibility to respond to the Nov. 20 op-ed entitled "A 'pro-life' position is logical and rational" by Jumbos for Life secretary Michael Hawley.
Hawley's piece was a response to an op-ed written the previous week about VOX's Choice campaign. Hawley's submission was well-written, clearly explained and had some pertinent points.
However, we do not want to start a Daily Op-Ed page war between Vox and Jumbos for Life, so this is the last op-ed I will submit regarding this campaign. I just want to clarify some issues that Michael brought up in his piece.
To kick off the Choice campaign, Vox tabled in the Campus Center and Carmichael and had students write down any choice they have made, no matter how small or unimportant, on cut-outs of sports bras and boxers. We then stapled these together to form the letters of the word choice, which we displayed out on the lawn. (It sounds complicated, but it looked awesome!)
However, Michael brings up an important point when he discusses how we emphasized all choices in trying to expand the meaning of pro-choice to including silly ones. He says in his op-ed, "To liken the decision to abort to the choice between boxers and briefs does a disservice to those on both sides who recognize that the debate is far more important and complicated than that."
I fully agree with this statement - that's why I want to clarify that the purpose of the Choice campaign was not to trivialize abortion: Our intent was not to compare the choice between types of underwear with the choice of whether or not to have an abortion.
Rather, we wanted to emphasize that if we have the ability to choose such small things as these, then we should have the choice to make the big decisions as well. The most important choices involve our health, happiness, dreams and bodies. The most important choices are parenthood or abortion, sex or abstinence, protection or dangerous risks.
It is when we lose these choices, when someone or something does not let us make our own decisions, that we lose our freedom and control over our own lives. If you've ever been hurt by someone taking away your right to make a choice, then you'll understand how important the freedom of choice is; we don't want to realize how important it is only when it's gone.
So what we were (and still are) trying to say is that all choices matter simply because we have the ability to make them, and the most important ones are the ones we should appreciate the most.
This campaign also examines the language we use to define two different belief systems. We are pointing out that pro-choice extends much further than simply pro-abortion. We are pro-having the option of abortion - and adoption and motherhood. Again, I ask why we label "anti-abortion" as "pro-life"?
Perhaps it is because of what Michael brings up in his article, the point in a pregnancy at which the groups on either side of this issue define the beginning of life. But does this make pro-choice people anti-life?
I believe that it's quite the opposite. We are pro-women's lives, pro-healthy lives, pro-free lives.
Furthermore, are pro-life people anti-women? Because restricting abortion does not stop or even lessen its occurrence; it simply makes it unsafe and kills thousands of women. I don't think either group would want to be defined as anti-life or anti-women.
So perhaps the better question is why we have these two different groups. Michael counters many of the arguments pro-choice uses to defend abortion, including those regarding the "life" of the fetus.
I could ramble off my own counter-arguments to all of his points, including a discussion about the quality of life of a baby that should not have been viable when it left the womb or raising the question of if we really want the ability to make babies outside of human bodies, but I won't. This is one of the fundamental disagreements between the groups that create the problem, so there is no use arguing about how life is defined.
Instead, we should consider why we have abortion in the first place (aside from situations in which it is medically necessary). Most pro-choice people will agree that it is not a pretty picture. The procedure itself is usually painful, and it is no decision that anyone ever wants to have to make. So what is it about our society that forces a woman into a situation where she must make this decision?
Here are some suggestions: Perhaps it is because the alternative of motherhood costs so much money, time and family support that she doesn't have. For example, teen pregnancy follows a social class gradient; the less educated one is, the less income one has, the more likely one is to become pregnant.
Or maybe it's because there are so few resources for a lower-income woman to support her children. She does not have health care and cannot afford daycare as there is no child care system in this country.
Or because she did not receive adequate education about sex, her body and contraception, even though comprehensive sex education programs are scientifically proven to reduce teen pregnancy rates, while abstinence-only education is not.
Or because even though she did know about contraception, she could no longer afford her birth control pills because of the huge spike in prices due to a recent bill passed by Congress.
Or her contraceptive method failed because she (or the man she was with) didn't know how to use it correctly. Or she was raped. Or she did not have the self-confidence to say no because women are still treated as the lesser sex, and some of us believe we are.
The list is long.
The fact is that we should be working to try to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place, helping overcome all the problems of society that contribute to our shockingly high abortion rates.
This is something I think both sides can agree on. But until then, we should be supporting abortion while it's still necessary and should always be supporting choice.
Alyssa Ursillo is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. She is vice president and secretary of VOX.
