Feminist Opposes Abortion

—Staff writer Alice E.M. Underwood can be reached at aeunderw@fas.harvard.edu.

Signs emblazoned with slogans such as "Adoption is an empowering option for women" and "Is this the face of the enemy?"—the latter accompanied by the image of a grinning infant—filled the room where Feminists for Life President Serrin M. Foster argued that opposing abortion is in the best interest of both women and babies.

"We want people to think about the issue in a different way," said Helen M. Keefe ’11, the vice president of speakers for Harvard Right to Life, which organized the event. "The criticism from the other side is that we don’t care about women and what they go through, but tonight’s message is that you can be a feminist and you can be pro-life at the same time."

Foster, whose organization advocates for the rights of pregnant women and their babies, said that it is important to look at the reasons why women choose to have abortions.

"Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women," Foster said, adding that whether women fear being fired, expelled from school, or abandoned by their partners, their common concern is facing pregnancy alone.

"We should be helping women so their unborn little ones are not willed away from them," she said.

Foster added that women who decide they are not ready to be mothers can make that choice without having an abortion by instead opting for adoption or child support as alternatives to abortion.

But she noted that most college campuses, including Harvard, offer little support for student parents. She said that only five women with children have graduated from Harvard College—the rest either dropped out or had abortions. Furthermore, students are not allowed to live in campus housing if they have children.

"If you want to find out about parenting, there’s a lack of resources at Harvard—not just for students, but for graduate students who are married and even professors," Foster said. "No woman should be forced to choose between her education or career and her children."

Foster added that many women are coerced into having abortions by employers’ threats that they will lose their jobs. For this and other reasons, she said, abortion should not be something women have to consider at all.

"We want to think about how to make abortion unthinkable," she said. "That’s bigger than illegal—it’s about how a woman can demand more of those around her and not accept crap from people."

While Foster’s talk focused on how to offer more alternatives to abortion and greater support for mothers who are reluctant to be parents—whether due to poverty, career and education goals, or having conceived through sexual assault—she did not address the desires of women who simply do not want to have children.

"If a woman decides her career is more important to her and she wants to get an abortion, she has the right to power over her own body," said Abby P. Sun ’13, co-president of the Radcliffe Union of Students. "Any restrictions that try to involve the authority of someone else—I don’t think that’s something I would ever support as a feminist."