Pro-Choice: Abortion to Go?

I was sitting in my room one evening a few days ago when I heard a noise outside my door. Thinking it was a friendly visitor, I called out an invitation to enter--but no one crossed my threshold. I eventually got up and opened the door. It was then that I discovered my close brush with evil.

Sitting in my small plastic bin, next to pizza delivery coupons and Coop flyers, was a special treat: a newsletter from Harvard-Radcliffe Students for Choice. What a wonderful gift left for me by Santa (Anagrams, anyone?)

At first I thought they had made a mistake. Surely they didn't think that I, or any of my roommates, were members of this group? Perhaps they had accidentally given me the copy meant for that Peninsula Council member living down the hall...

A quick glance around the hall-way confirmed by suspicions, however: the members of this group had, in their great munificence, decided to bless all of Harvard with copies of their newsletter. So I started reading. And what did I find?

One can learn much about the pro-abortion movement by carrying out a close reading of this newsletter. It begins with a short note from "Mike, Nisha and Becky," the officers of Harvard-Radcliffe Students for Choice.

"We have lots of ideas for this semester, Dylan, Kelly and Brenda tell us in this message, "including Condom [sic] Week, a Freedom of Choice Act Rallly [sic], etc." My question is, how "dum" do you have to be to spell condom with a "u?" I mean, reallllly.

While I understand a cause can't be discounted simply because its leaders need Hooked-on-Phonics, the errors are insightful. Apparently Mike, Nisha Becky are paying so much attention to cutting-edge abortion technologies that they've overlooked a centuries-old civilization advance. It's called proofreading.

Of the officers, Mike (last name unknown) is listed first. How convenient to have a man at the helm of the abortion club. To the untutored eye, it would seem like...tokenism. But it couldn't have been that. I bet Mike was elected because of his great speech at the club elections.

I can already imagine the speech he gave: "Elect me--I promise I'll do absolutely nothing! I'll never interfere with your decision. I'll keep abortion safe, legal, free--and away from evil men like myself."

"But feel free," Mike might have said, "to use me to represent the male gender. Now that you have a male officer, you can justify denying men any say in whether their children get aborted or not. Down with notification of spouses!"

What a sensitive guy this Mike must be! Or is this just a really smart way to get dates...

The letter from the officers is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, dear reader. Our miracle of literature goes on for another two pages.

The newsletter then starts talking about "Operation Rescue, Randall Terry, Joseph Scheidler, the Pro-Life Action League and other anti-abortion extremists."

Quoting from a lawsuit initiated by NOW, the letter alludes to how anti-abortion forces have tried to shut down clinics with "force, threats of force, fear and intimidation."

These words are emblematic of the selective focus of pro-abortion forces when characterizing the prolife movement. The technique is a display of public relations wizardry.

The tactic: stress the isolated acts of violence committed by a few members of the pro-life movement in order to weaken the whole movement and its struggle against violence.

What are the methods the pro-life activists use in advancing their cause? The most common ones are peaceful marches, prayer meetings and candlelight vigils--the exact same methods used by the civil rights movement of the 1950s.

As much as Mike, Nisha and Becky would like us to believe otherwise, not every person opposed to abortion is a violent, trigger-happy, Christian fundamentalist fanatic.

The newsletter refers to pro-life activist as "anti-choice protestors [sic]." Bringing the language of choice to the issue of abortion, and calling themselves "pro-choice, " was a simply themselves brilliant maneuver by the pro-abortion movement. It reduces the decision to abort to just another part of our modern consumer culture.

"What shall I choose today" the woman contemplating abortion asks herself. "The red blouse, or the blue blouse? McDonald's or Burger King? Abortion, or carrying the child to term?"

Applying the paradigm of choice to the problem of abortion is a public relations coup for the movement--as well as a huge misapplication of the democratic principle of choice.

It's also sad commentary on the state of our nation.