In the past several weeks, the media has been deluged with pro-life propaganda, and I feel I must express my personal revulsion at the attention given to these people.

Though masters at publicity, pro-lifers certainly do not represent the opinion of the majority of people in the U.S. Instead of bringing a message of caring to the public, they have presented violence, intolerance, and an utter disrespect for women. I want to call attention to the case for the pro-choice side and explain the vital need for safe, legal abortion.

In the mid-1950s, the Planned Parenthood Federation estimated that approximately 200,000 to 1,000,000 abortions were performed in the U.S. each year. Most were illegal. Wealthy women could enter hospitals and hire a private doctor to perform an abortion under the guise of "therapeutic abortion," but, for the most part, women went to dark alleys, were blind-folded so as not to remember where they'd been or identify the abortionist, and hoped they didn't end up crippled, sterilized or dead.

In 1972, the Center for Disease Control estimated the number of abortions for that year at 615,000. And, 39 women are known to have died as a result. The number left sterilized or infected has never been known.

This terrible situation was alleviated by Roe vs. Wade. After winning the desperate war for legalized abortion, women came out of the alleys and could finally control the course of their own bodies.

Yet, the argument of the pro-lifers does not center around women. Women, who have given birth to the entire human race, are not at the center of a decision affecting their entire lives!

No, the pro-lifers focus on the embryo. They assert that an unborn fetus has the same rights as a fully adult person. How do they justify this?

The point is that they can't. Medical science has, for decades, said that a completely human person exists after "viability." That is, when a person can exist outside the womb. The third trimester of pregnancy has always been the point of viability. In 1988, a prominent neurologist determined that the fetal nervous system is incapable of sustaining life before 28 weeks (seven months) of development. When one considers that 90.5 percent of all abortions are performed before 12 weeks, and that 99.99 percent are performed before 24 weeks, it can safely be said that abortions do not involve the termination of human persons.

The remaining 0.01 percent, or about 100 abortions per year, are performed during the third trimester. These fetuses are potentially capable of life. Abortions in such cases are performed only when the mother's life is endangered. Here, though, it is only correct to prioritize the life of the fully human mother over the mere potential of the fetus.

In every year since Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, polls have shown consistently that the American public favors keeping abortion a private choice. The pro-life groups, however, have been so extreme and vocal that the subject has scarcely been left alone. These people profess, in the name of God, to love human life. Then how, I ask you, do they justify their use of bombings and arson to attack Family Planning clinics? Do they love life only before birth?

There are reasons why abortion was legalized in the first place, and those have not changed. The arguments for legalized abortion are many and logical.

Christie Strub
Sophomore-art