Informing Choice

Harvard Right to Life’s (HRL) recently commenced Natalie poster campaign—which features a fetus in various stages of development from conception to birth along with informative statements about her development—has drawn considerable criticism of late. Natalie has been called a campaign against female undergraduates and even a form of terrorism. In flagrant violation of University rules and ethical norms, Natalie posters have a median life span of about four hours before being ripped down (an Ad Board-able offense). What is it about these posters that is so objectionable? Do they feature aborted fetuses? Or hurl expletives at women who have had abortions? On the contrary. These posters are not objectionable in any way, featuring only simple pictures and factual statements.

The poster campaign has been characterized as not being part of a campaign to foster awareness. Nothing could be less true. College students (aside from perhaps biology concentrators) remember little or nothing of the human development they learned in middle or high school, certainly nothing of any relevance for when they need to make life-and-death decisions such as whether to abort a child. As caring peers it is our duty to inform our fellows so that they can make informed decisions concerning their lives and the lives of their children. This is what HRL has been doing and what we shall continue to do.

Arguments that support abortion rights take as a given that a fetus is not a person. HRL takes the opposite position. While our opponents find a fetus’ lack of personhood obvious and try to squelch debate on the topic by focusing exclusively on the rights of a mother, we think fetal personhood is a question that needs to be carefully examined by voters (the target audience for the postering campaign) in order for them to make an informed voting decision. Consideration of fetal personhood is also important to any woman considering aborting a fetus. Our posters seek to provide information (such as what attributes a fetus has at different stages) that could help people make such determinations rationally.

We have been accused of morally inappropriate intimidation and told that the Natalie campaign does not promote awareness or education. Surely, before anyone undertakes as important a decision as whether to terminate a pregnancy, she should be fully aware of what she is doing. And, without a doubt, after three weeks, she is stopping a beating heart. This is simple fact, not editorializing. To encourage women to abort fetuses without full knowledge of what they are doing is not promoting choice; it is being deceitful. For those who have already decided that life only begins at viability or birth, it makes sense to make deciding to abort as easy as possible. For those who are not ready to concede that point or who think that life may begin earlier or think they still need to think about it, it’s important to give all the information necessary to make an informed choice—especially since many women who have aborted their fetuses go through periods of grief and guilt for which they are unprepared.

We are told that a solution that centers on women means that a woman is fairly informed of all the options available to her. HRL does not feel that pregnant Harvard women are fairly informed of their situations and options. First, they lack the information we present in the Natalie campaign. Second, they must deal with the lies and misinformation that the supporters of abortion rights have spread for decades. We feel it is our moral duty to speak up whenever it is clear that the common knowledge is wrong. For example, one abortion urban myth is that for the first several months of gestation “products of conception” (a popular euphemism in the 1980s) are just undifferentiated blobs of cells. We hope that our pictures and posters dispel this myth.

It is a tragedy that many Harvard women don’t know all their options beyond abortion. This is a tragedy, however, that we are already fighting. Our website provides contact information for at least a dozen groups that counsel and support women experiencing crisis pregnancies. Conversely, the websites of Students for Choice and the Radcliffe Union of Students provide zero links for students interested in keeping their children (unless you count Planned Parenthood or the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League—groups known to have a vested interest in abortion).

Additionally, we are currently working to develop a guide to Harvard resources for pregnant women. We originally organized a forum in February 2001 to convince administrators to create such a guide. As they have not done so, it is now one of our long-term projects. Our members also have volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center in Boston and, in one case, even trekked to Quincy, Mass. to assist a critically pregnant woman in moving to a new apartment.

Harvard Right to Life has made good faith efforts to increase choice for pregnant women. Have you?

Paul C. Schultz ’03, a Crimson editor, is president of Harvard Right to Life. Claire V. McCusker ’04 is HRL’s Student Group Liaison.