Pro-Life, Dead on the Diag

Excerpted from Deion Kathawa’s original article in The Michigan Review. Republished with permission. 

The Diag, Ann Arbor – Students for Choice (SFC), a pro-choice group at the University of Michigan, held an informational event on the Diag on Thursday, Oct. 1st.

Support was shown by Planned Parenthood by allowing students to create “thank you” cards and pose for pictures holding signs that read #StandwithPP, to pass out stickers, buttons, and condoms, and to correct misinformation. In the roughly three hours that I spent there, I saw around 50 students visit the table that SFC had set up.

One student, Connie, an organizer for SFC, had this to say when asked about her personal opinion on abortion: “It’s complicated. My mother actually had several abortions in China—because of the one-child policy. … I just think women should have a choice—whether to raise a child, abort, give it up for adoption. And those options should be safe.”

One must be willfully ignorant of embryology to believe that what is inside a mother is not a human being. I wonder if this is Connie’s view, or if she recognizes the humanity of the unborn but simply averts her gaze? Does she realize that the option to abort is never even remotely “safe” for the baby because a successful abortion always results in the death of a child?

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards gave sworn testimony before Congress on September 30th, admitting that Planned Parenthood’s over 600 clinics do not have a single mammogram machine and thus do not provide that service to women, and that abortion is 86% of the organization’s business, not the oft-bandied-about 3% figure.

Asked about the hearing, Connie responded, “I’m not sure I want to offer my reaction because of how you might want to twist my words.” She added, “We have a lot of great resources for women.”

I spoke with a number of other students—both organizers and casual observers—about the event and their views on abortion and Planned Parenthood more generally.

Read the rest over at The Michigan Review.