College Feminists forget abortion ends innocent lives
College Feminists assumed Northwestern Students For Life's "pro-life" status made us close-minded extremists who disregard women's rights ("Flag display angers feminists, skews issue," Jan. 25). We will not do them the same favor. "Feminist" can denote a number of positions, many of which are "pro-life."
Last Monday, Nathaniel Zebrowski and Porsha Reed persuasively argued that the unborn child is human. College Feminists have not contested these facts. Accept the humanity of the unborn, and you will see it is unacceptable to terminate the lives of America's most innocent.
College Feminists called our exhibit "disgusting," "inflammatory" and "hostile." We must be alarmed when a majority group takes such an extreme sensitivity to the display of uncontested and verifiable facts propounding an issue of civil rights. Those who initially understood the 3,700 flags to memorialize the loss of American lives in Iraq reaffirm the idea that a country's flag can symbolize a life lost.
Many mothers face difficulties none of us can begin to understand, but how many mothers wish they had aborted their child? There are resources to help pregnant women, and NSFL supports a local pregnancy center and an adoption agency. The fact that 98 percent of abortions are done for "personal choice" (not for health reasons or the case of rape) shows that we still have much work to do in empowering women.
Abortion's legalization permitted the 1,500-percent increase of abortion. Reversing the decision will decrease the number of abortions. Regulated abortion means increased pregnancy support, adoption help and sex education. Unregulated abortion means the status quo: 34 abortions to every one adoption referral.
- Mike Breidenbach Weinberg junior NSFL President
- Nikolia Rallis SESP sophomore NSFL Service Chair
Non-existent people can't be victims of sexual harassment
While Tony Evans' Jan. 22 column was admittedly audacious, Elizabeth Keating's response ("Indiscreet joke insults all women," Jan. 26) blithely went beyond intelligent discourse and dove headlong into what Prof. Michele Weldon inaccurately criticized Evans for practicing "irresponsible journalism."
Responsible editorial journalism uses fact to support opinion. From the premise that she found his use of "frightening" and "ominous" eroticism "disgusting," she attempted to link a truth ("American women are at war against sexual abuse, and it's certainly not fair") with a litany of irrelevant points and factual errors to demonize Evans.
For one, one cannot go "beyond freedom of expression." Expression is either free or limited by political (coercive) means. If pursuing feminism is to limit the progress of women by supporting laws that define them as incapable of defending themselves, even in a private forum, then you are on the right track.
Further, Evans' column does not in any way violate the university's sexual harassment policy. Read it. Fictional characters don't experience real pain, nor do they ask not to be written about, nor can they be sexually harassed by journalists.
The column was untargeted and fictional and is thus utterly exempt. If not, you're getting sexually harassed by the library's literature as we speak. Won't somebody please sue Borders for spreading this filth?
As if to underscore her column's lack of validity, Keating topped it off by resorting to yellow journalism with a sensationalist Michael Richards reference. Classy.
If The Daily Northwestern editors violated university rules by publishing Evans' column, then they are subject to punishment. But Evans wrote nothing that injured a real person or group; he simply used eroticism to satirize forlorn love in an arguably tasteless manner. I find harmless provocation far more responsible than journalism that seeks to advance a self-defeating political agenda through non-sequiturs and reactionary statements.
- Ryan Wojes McCormick senior
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