Dear Editor,
I lurked around the Students for Life exhibit last Tuesday for around 15 minutes. While I was there, I heard two female students talking. One was relating an incident that happened the day before. She and a male student, who had no previous stance on the abortion issue, had walked by the exhibit. The pictures resonated so strongly with the male student that he right then proclaimed he was no longer apathetic to the debate. He decided he was anti-abortion rights. The female relating the story derided her friend’s decision because it was borne out of strong feelings rather than rational, intellectual debate.
So, we’ve replaced our consciences with intellectualism, now? That’s happened in the past, you know, and those events have names like the “Reign of Terror” and “Holocaust”. As a human being, I feel sickened and angry every time I see pictures of the Holocaust, the genocides in Darfur and Rwanda and other atrocities against human beings. Isn’t everyone supposed to feel that way when they see the murder of innocents? Perhaps investigators and coroners have to feel a bit of dispassion in order to do their job, but everyone knows these are atrocities – wrongs against the human race.
Abortion is the same way. I should not be surprised that The Maneater is taking the position it is. It’s proven to be out of touch with reality often, shockingly so this particular semester. Whether or not you agree that abortion fulfills the U.N. definition on genocide matters so little to me. It’s focusing the debate on something very insignificant, given the larger picture. All of those images of genocide in the exhibit this week should elicit the same feelings from every human being, and the pictures of torn and bloody little fingers, toes, hands, feet, bodies, heads, eyes, mouths and noses, if you have a heart or a conscience, should have done the same. This is why I hate abortion and why it needs to be illegal. I am thrilled that there is finally an organization on campus committed to that very cause.
Rebecca Vogler
Grad Student – Library Science
BA ’10 – Political Science and Religious Studies
University of Missouri
ravvd6@mail.missouri.edu