Readers respond to anti-abortion protests on campus

First of all, the pictures of dismembered babies were certainly not the result of any legal abortion. The fetuses of abortions performed in the first trimester bear no resemblance to the fully formed babies in the pictures.

Furthermore, to compare and equate the moral issues surrounding animal testing, Nazism, hate groups and abortion is an absurd premise that ignores the complexities of each of these varied issues. To simplify such complicated issues by aligning grotesque pictures of each, as if they are all the same, is an insulting display of ignorance.

I support freedom of speech and the right to express individual beliefs. I do not support the mental battering that this display exhibited. A student who leaves his or her dorm room has the right to walk peacefully to class without being bombarded with disturbing pictures. It is one thing to share your beliefs with others in a constructive way. It is yet another to impose your views about a personal issue with huge inescapable visual images filled with lies and propaganda.

Abortion is a difficult issue for everyone, those who believe in the right to individual choice and those who do not. For women who have had to endure the trauma of an abortion, it is an emotionally difficult experience that they felt was their only option. To batter them further, as well as anyone else who struggles with the morality of this difficult subject, is a violation of privacy and of out right to choose what we believe and what we observe.

Its only effect is to hurt and anger people and it serves no useful purpose. This will not stop abortion but will only widen the gap that divides people over the issue. It will show the ignorance of whoever was behind this brutal display.

This type of outrageous display of personal opinion should not be allowed to litter our college campus, a place where we attempt to live and learn among our many different beliefs.

Karrie Gavin
senior-English

Life can be difficult, and life is not always fun, but it is the best opportunity we can ever get. It is better than not living at all. It is selfish for one to deny that opportunity to another, especially a child who hasn't been born yet. Can any abortion supporter honestly answer the question, "Do you wish you had been aborted?" with a "yes." Live and let live. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you, even if it might not be the easiest thing for you.

Andy Dincher
sophomore-history

This letter is to support these statements and to condemn the blatant exploitation of the Holocaust to promote political agendas. The word misery, death or murder cannot in any way completely describe the Holocaust.

The only word that can describe the Holocaust is the word "Holocaust." When I think of the suffering and torture of the 12 million fellow human beings that perished in the Holocaust, I want to cry. The Holocaust occurred in a dark period of humanity and in no way should it be repeated.

The only thing that can be done today about the Holocaust is to educate people so history will not repeat itself, to mourn the loss of the innocent people and to respect the people who have survived.

A group has used graphic images of the Holocaust to somehow make an analogy with their political viewpoints. I will not state this group's political viewpoint or ideology because that is not the issue at hand. The issue is that this group is insulting people and destroying the notion of human decency. Part of being a human is to have respect for others. I have respect for this group to believe that their political issue is correct.

I may or may not agree with their political issue, though. The problem is that this group is not conveying their political ideas at all. This group's motive to prove their political standpoint, by displaying a false analogy, is completely ignorant.

This group has no right, as caring human beings, to disrespect others in a malicious way by displaying swastikas, SS officers and ruthless acts of genocide in order to convey their message. There are a couple of things that come to mind when I think of what they're doing -- embarrassment to the human race and sadness for the people who walk by and become offended by this horrible analogy.

If this group wants to display pictures of the Holocaust, it should be done in memory of the victims. The innocent should not be victimized again, they should be remembered and their loss should be mourned.

I ask something of this political group. Please remove your horrible display of ignorance from our campus. Please apologize for your inhumane attempt to capitalize on others' pain and sorrow. Please respect others. Please stop embarrassing yourselves, your cause and the human race.

Eric A. Foreman
vice president of Penn State HILLEL: The Foundation For Jewish Campus Life

I'd just like to say that morality is personal and subjective. It is dangerous to attempt to legislate based solely on one group's definition of morality. Plenty of people in the world believe that a female publicly exposing any part of her body is immoral; using the claim from the posters, shouldn't it be illegal that the women who helped hold the signs wore clothing that exposed their arms, legs and faces?

Although I appreciate people's right to express what they believe, I also want to make observers of these posters aware of something. Regardless of your personal views on whether you personally would ever have or suggest an abortion, the fact is that making abortion illegal is not a solution. We would simply return to dangerous black-market abortion clinics, along with thousands of women who use coat hangers or other gruesome processes to abort in secret.

If people who are against abortion want to do something to truly help their cause, I recommend that they focus more on educating people about alternative options and giving them emotional support during pregnancy and after childbirth to help prevent potential abuse of an unwanted child.

Carla Moquin
senior-psychology

I have my own opinion on the subject, as does everyone else, and I'm not going to try and change anyone else's opinion. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, and everyone is entitled to share his or her opinion as long as it is not posing a "clear and present danger" to anyone else as stated in the Constitution.

But I found a big flaw in Wednesday's letter to the editor. Abortion IS comparable to the Holocaust and to the lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan. During the Holocaust, millions of "innocent" Jews were killed by the Nazis without any concern for their "choice." Today, millions of abortions occur without concern for what the "innocent" fetus wants -- mothers are making choices to abort their babies just like Nazis and KKK members chose to kill the Jews and blacks.

It seems to me that many people are making the mistake of calling these controversies incomparable when in fact they really are. The mothers are being compared to the Nazis and KKK members while the unborn babies are being compared to the Jews and blacks.

Whether or not abortion is right or wrong is up to each and every individual woman, and they are the ones who will have to deal with their choice along with their unborn babies just like the Nazis and KKK members had to deal with the choices of killing the Jews and blacks along with the families of the victims they killed.

Beth Merkel
sophomore-accounting

My first thought was that these pictures must have been put up by demonstrators who did not have University authority to do so. I figured that a display such as this would never have been allowed in a million years. I continued on to class with these haunting images in the back of my mind.

Later that day, I learned the display was in fact "legal" and would remain here through the weekend. What really got me thinking about the images was when I learned that they were placed there in an effort to promote anti-abortion by campus Christian groups.

As a member of the Christian faith, I would like to say that I am very disappointed at the presentation of these images on our campus. Whether you are Christian or Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist, pro-choice or pro-life, I feel a need to apologize for what I saw.

Spreading a message, especially to bright young college students such as ourselves, should not involve making a person sick to his stomach to make a point. I felt insulted by what I saw.

My Christian faith has taught me to live differently. I am only saying this because I feel that in no way is this display a representation of Christianity. Teaching others about abortion and forcing horrible images into a person's head are two totally different ways of handling this very sensitive issue. I feel that it was important that people of other faiths hear a reaction from those responsible.

I would like to share with you a part of a Christian prayer card that I carry around every day. "JUST FOR TODAY I will try to go out of my way to be kind to someone I meet; I will be agreeable . . . talk low, act courteously, criticize not one bit, not find fault with anything and not try to improve or regulate anybody except myself." This is what Christianity is about. Thank you for letting me share my opinion.

Jayson Virostek
freshman-business

It is inconceivable to me that a person could not be saddened and disturbed by ALL of the images in this display. It is also inconceivable that someone could honestly believe that the final picture of the three is not a human being.

I do not understand why people seem to be so upset over the comparisons between the Holocaust, violence against African Americans and the barbaric acts perpetrated against unborn children. All three are victims of unspeakably horrible crimes based on some form of prejudice. This display is not meant in any way to trivialize the events of the Holocaust or lynchings; it is meant to open people's eyes to the terrible realities of abortion by comparing it to these great evils.

The comparison is not unwarranted. Someone is quoted as saying an article of The Daily Collegian Wednesday that the matters are not comparable because abortion is "consensual" whereas lynching was not. Consensual? Abortion is definitely not consensual on the part of the victim.

I also am disturbed at how often the abortion issue is referred to as a "political agenda." Taxes are a political agenda, this is a matter of life and death.

Martin Milz
freshman-premedicine

Putting your disgusting signs outside of classrooms is one thing but in East Halls? Like it or not, East Halls is a home to many. How would you like it if I put those tasteless posters outside of your dorm/house/apartment?

Besides the inconsiderate location of the posters, their inappropriateness offends everyone that walks by. Can't we just enjoy the beautiful weather without having to look at mutilated bodies? Enough already!

Kristin Oestreicher
freshman-industrial engineering

"genocide (n): The systematic, planned annihilation of a racial, political, or cultural group. (From the Greek genos, meaning 'race')."

I suppose those fetuses were registered Green Party.

I prefer not to debate the issue of reproductive freedom here; few, if any, would be swayed from their beliefs by a letter to the editor. However, I would like to express my dismay at the death of debate. In their graphic display likening abortion to the Nazi Holocaust and the acts of the Ku Klux Klan, the members of the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) show their clear disregard for logic, reason and the elegance of a well-crafted argument.

I am quite in favor of startling people out of their comfortable notions of reality, daring them to think in a new way. GAP just should have checked a dictionary first. They are welcome to borrow mine.

Sharon J. Cichelli
staff assistant and Class of 1997

Look for more letters to the editor on this issue in Monday's edition.