Harvard Right To Life Posters Advance Abortion Debate

To the editors:



Re: “Pro-Life Posters Spark Debate,” news, Mar. 6

The irrational trashing of “Elena posters” by students demonstrates once again the wisdom of Harvard Right to Life’s developing-baby poster campaigns.

Those who favor legalized abortion often try to distract the abortion debate by agnostically temporizing about the status of the fetus and instead focusing solely on the social and economic situation of the mother. With this distraction in place, most people can tune out the abortion debate most of the time.

This supposedly agnostic position is dishonest—the one-cell product of a human egg and a human sperm is alive. Thus the debate should center around whether we will recognize the rights of the developing fetus.

The pro-choice position is easier to maintain, logically and emotionally, when the debate is carried on in a sterile forum of words, whose meanings can be bent or ignored. The inclusion of the Elena pictures forecloses the “potential life” lie and forces even unwilling persons to consider the more uncomfortable question of when the developing fetus has the same rights as you and I. Harvard Right to Life seeks to change the debate and the evidence suggests that this campaign is already doing so.

The destruction of the “Elena posters” that The Crimson reports today and has editorialized against in the past occurs because some members of the Harvard community are either extremely uncomfortable with their personal beliefs or are unwilling to allow their peers to consider it. This frustration of free speech and debate is cowardly, and unbecoming of the Harvard students who participate in it.



PAUL C. SCHULTZ ’04

Ann Arbor, Mich.

March 6, 2006