 The WHI and the Pro-Life Club shared their views on abortion with students in the Dustbowl yesterday afternoon.
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Students gathered yesterday in the Dustbowl to represent both sides of one of American society's most contentious and divisive issues: the right for a pregnant woman to choose to have an abortion. The issue was not as significant in this year's presidential election as it has been in the past, which Rachel Lamorte, Women's Health Initiative (WHI) member and A&S '10, said she attributes to the importance of the economy's dominance in the minds of voters. Since the election, however, some Catholic officials have spoken out strongly against President-elect Barack Obama's stance on abortion rights, including some more extreme examples who have suggested that Catholics who voted for him should refrain from receiving the Eucharist.
Andrew Kaplun, WHI president and A&S '09, said that his group was there to represent a difference of opinion and to demonstrate that there is no singular viewpoint on campus. "We just want to make sure that people don't think that the voice of the University is monolithic on reproductive issues," he said. "We just want people to know who we are."
Kaplun and others who are involved in the WHI situated themselves at the top of the pathway leading down into the Dustbowl with signs and literature. All those present said education about the issue is crucial to being able to make an intelligent personal decision. Mari Knuth, a WHI supporter and LSOE '09, said, "How better to educate people than to give them information on both sides and let them make up their own minds? There needs to be a dialogue."
Lamorte said, "The entire idea of choice is that people think about these issues."
Abortion rights is an issue that typically raises strong emotions in members of the Catholic community, and Kaplun said that this has sometimes been detrimental to dialogue about the issue.
"I think that it's been more difficult in the past," Lamorte said.
The WHI members said they had few negative responses to their presence, barring one man who stopped to engage the students in a critical manner. "People have been extremely supportive," Kaplun said.
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