A Letter to the Editor
Issue date: 10/27/05 Section: Letters to Editor
Dear Editor,
I attended the Justice for All event hosted by the UAH College Republicans on Wednesday, and I was so appalled by it that I felt compelled to write.
Perhaps the most tasteless part was the pamphlet handed out at the entrance. It contained pictures of extracted pregnancies of at all stages. It was gruesome and in poor taste, for it did nothing to make an argument. The sole purpose of the pictures was clearly to arouse emotions. This is typical of anti-choice campaigns. They have no sound arguments, so they appeal to voter emotions.
The second downfall of this event was the speaker, Kirk Lauder. He is not a professional, or a politician, or a woman speaking to the issue. He is the President of the College Republicans at Huntington College, and his credentials include internships under Jeff Sessions and Tom DeLay. As a woman, I was not excited to hear a 20-something man telling me that its important to "tell women the truth about abortion" so that they will stop having them - as if we look at abortion as an impulse buy! That was nothing short of degrading to a woman's ability to make sound judgment, and I sincerely did not appreciate it coming from a fellow male student. But I digress...
The one point that he kept coming back to was this: The question is not one of women's rights, or of personal morality. The issue comes down to one question - is it human? He insisted that because human life begins at conception, all pregnancies are protected by the constitution at that point. Mr. Lauder cited the part of the 14th amendment that says no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
What Mr. Lauder failed to acknowledge is the part of the 14th amendment that says "All persons BORN or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." I questioned him about this. I asked him if this meant that one had to be born to be under jurisdiction of the United States. He told me (I paraphrase) that if I looked further down the amendment, it was clear that the legislators meant for the amendment's protections to hold true for all persons, regardless of citizenship. If this is true, why did we bother with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Conventions, or International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights? Furthermore, I found it disturbing that his only response to my point of fact was effectively, "yeah...but don't look at that part, look over here."
Overall, the presentation was built on specious reasoning and ad hominem arguments. I felt like my faith and morality was being exploited in hopes that I would support the Republican party. As one who is both pro-choice and anti-abortion, I found it offensive that Mr. Lauder thought he could win me over with tasteless photos, appeals to my faith, and attacks on a woman's ability to make moral decisions. I sincerely hope that the Republican party one day comes to respect a woman's faith, morality and intelligence enough to stop sending young men to tell us what we should believe and how we should vote...particularly on this campus.
Sincerely,
Courtney Evans
I attended the Justice for All event hosted by the UAH College Republicans on Wednesday, and I was so appalled by it that I felt compelled to write.
Perhaps the most tasteless part was the pamphlet handed out at the entrance. It contained pictures of extracted pregnancies of at all stages. It was gruesome and in poor taste, for it did nothing to make an argument. The sole purpose of the pictures was clearly to arouse emotions. This is typical of anti-choice campaigns. They have no sound arguments, so they appeal to voter emotions.
The second downfall of this event was the speaker, Kirk Lauder. He is not a professional, or a politician, or a woman speaking to the issue. He is the President of the College Republicans at Huntington College, and his credentials include internships under Jeff Sessions and Tom DeLay. As a woman, I was not excited to hear a 20-something man telling me that its important to "tell women the truth about abortion" so that they will stop having them - as if we look at abortion as an impulse buy! That was nothing short of degrading to a woman's ability to make sound judgment, and I sincerely did not appreciate it coming from a fellow male student. But I digress...
The one point that he kept coming back to was this: The question is not one of women's rights, or of personal morality. The issue comes down to one question - is it human? He insisted that because human life begins at conception, all pregnancies are protected by the constitution at that point. Mr. Lauder cited the part of the 14th amendment that says no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
What Mr. Lauder failed to acknowledge is the part of the 14th amendment that says "All persons BORN or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." I questioned him about this. I asked him if this meant that one had to be born to be under jurisdiction of the United States. He told me (I paraphrase) that if I looked further down the amendment, it was clear that the legislators meant for the amendment's protections to hold true for all persons, regardless of citizenship. If this is true, why did we bother with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Conventions, or International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights? Furthermore, I found it disturbing that his only response to my point of fact was effectively, "yeah...but don't look at that part, look over here."
Overall, the presentation was built on specious reasoning and ad hominem arguments. I felt like my faith and morality was being exploited in hopes that I would support the Republican party. As one who is both pro-choice and anti-abortion, I found it offensive that Mr. Lauder thought he could win me over with tasteless photos, appeals to my faith, and attacks on a woman's ability to make moral decisions. I sincerely hope that the Republican party one day comes to respect a woman's faith, morality and intelligence enough to stop sending young men to tell us what we should believe and how we should vote...particularly on this campus.
Sincerely,
Courtney Evans