March for Choice

DESPITE the urgency of the abortion war, officers of Harvard/Radcliffe Students for Choice say that with less than one week to go before the Second National Mobilization for Women's Lives, only half the number of Harvard representatives that participated in last year's march have signed up to go to the capital. Thus far only six busloads of students are scheduled to join the Harvard contingent on Sunday, as compared to 11 last spring.

Last April an estimated 900 people from the University attended the first-of-its-kind March on Washington to defend a woman's right to choose an abortion. The national situation has since become more grave for defenders of this right, with an increasingly antagonistic Republican administration in office and a Supreme Court handing down decisions like this past July's answer in Webster v. Reproductive Services, which made it legal for a state to restrict a woman's access to abortion.

The summer's decision is an ominous portent of the future of the freedom of choice as the court prepares to hear more cases on the issue this fall--in any or all of which the Court could take away that constitutional right. Furthermore, proponents of choice now must send their message to the individual states, because the decision passed the debate to that forum as well.

THE reasons for participating in this week's march are many. We are in the midst of election time--candidates must be shown that men and women nationwide are not about to silently sit back and let Washington take away abortion rights. And the states, to whom the Supreme Court is passing the ball, must be told that the debate over choice is a national, constitutional issue and that they should not only protect choice but also provide funding for poorer women seeking abortions.

Now is the time to stand up for these rights which seem to be slipping away before our very eyes. Defenders of choice should make every effort to attend the march this weekend. But the pro-choice movement need not start or end with the march on Washington. Massachusetts promises to be an important battleground for the abortion issue, and students should join marches at the state House as well as at the Capitol. In addition, there is a petition circulating in Harvard Square and in many of the houses that calls for abortion to be protected as a clear constitutional right. We urge students to support all of these necessary endeavors to secure freedom of choice.