Prochoice at UNM in Oct 2006

Here are 2 op-ed regarding pro-choice from our events at UNM in Oct 2006 for pro-choiceIn 1996 Senator Rick Santorum's wife suffered a miscarriage; the twenty-week-old fetus lived outside the womb for only two hours. Santorum wrapped the fetus in a blanket and then took it to his in-laws home, where he made his young children (they were 6, 4, and 1 1/2 at the time) cuddle and sing to their "dead brother." Santorum keeps a picture of the fetus, named Gabriel, in his Senate office (Washington Post article by Mark Leibovich, April 18, 2005). This ludicrous response to a very sad time for his family is suggestive. If pictures speak a thousand words, what does Santorum's picture of his wife's miscarriage reveal? Likewise, what do the pictures displayed this week in Smith Plaza by the radical right wing group Justice for All indicate about that groups tactics and rationale?

With their gigantic photos of aborted fetuses, this group literally forces their "view" of abortion upon innocent passersby (including young children). No fetus ever looked like that: the 70x80 blow up of a fetus that may in actuality be invisible to the human eye is disingenuous but it also reveals JFA's rabid focus on the unborn fetus to the detriment of every other interest group. The skewed picture reveals skewed logic and intensely skewed emotion.

Indeed, JFA's visual and verbal rhetoric borders on the inane and the violent. Attempting to link abortion to genocide, the holocaust, and lynchings of African Americans, JFA mistakenly equates the lives of human beings with entities that cannot yet live and breathe on their own. In fact, JFA's minimal interest in actually dedicating themselves to stopping racism and anti-Semitism puts into question their comparison of abortion with the holocaust and lynchings. When do we ever see them protesting the conditions of living, breathing minorities in this country or elsewhere? Here again, the fetus trumps everything else.

Also, by using such analogies, JFA implies that women who have abortions are perpetrators of genocide, equivalent to Nazi war criminals or rabid Ku Klux Klansmen. During their last visit to UNM they harangued women who said that they had had abortions. So fiercely protective of the unborn fetus, they violently attack women, whose pregnancies, too often, are the result of rape or incest. JFA doesn't care about the brutal poverty in America and across the globe that makes having another mouth to feed a tragic imposition on the lives of the already born. Nor do they have a clue that adults might like to decide how many children to have as well as when to have them; bottom line, there is an implied belief that women should have no choice about pregnancy even if it means their own lives are in danger. Like that gigantic picture of the fetus in the plaza, the unborn fetus's rights, according to JFA, are far more important than and literally outweigh the rights of the woman, her family, or her other children.

No one likes abortion, including pro-choice advocates. But abortions are not going away, no matter how often groups like JFA shove their gruesome pictures in our faces. Not until we can end rape, incest, poverty, unwanted or difficult pregnancies, defective fetuses, etc. will we ever be able to get rid of the need for safe abortions. Focusing on the bigger picture, if you will, of why unwanted pregnancies occur in the first place might stop folks like JFA from focusing so obsessively and luridly on pictures of aborted fetuses. And switching the focus might help us to make abortion rare and safe and really show our concern for justice for all.