Village Voice
HIGHER ED
BY NORAH VINCENT
Pro-Choice Is No-Choice on Campus
Spread 'Em
American institutions of higher learning have bent over backward to
coddle-no, valorize-feminists, blacks, gays, and the disabled. But few
of them have given the golden nod to one particularly vulnerable
minority: mothers.
As Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life (FFL), a group that
has sponsored Pregnancy Resources Forums at Georgetown, Swarthmore,
Berkeley, and elsewhere, describes it: "You don't have a place to
live; you don't have day care; you don't have maternity coverage. The
institutions force women to choose between sacrificing their education
or career goals and their child. There's this really hostile thing about
women having babies.
Women who are visibly pregnant on college campuses are treated like
exotic animals."
At Yale, the basic health plan (YHP Basic), which is funded in part by
student tuition, pays for coeds to have an unlimited number of
abortions. It doesn't, however, cover obstetric care. (Obstetric care is
obtainable through
supplementary insurance, which all Yale students are required to have
either through their families or through the university for a fee.)
According to statistics provided to FFL by a health care center and a
nearby pregnancy care center at one university in the Northeast, in just
one year, from a total pool of 3000 women students, 600 had pregnancy
tests.
Three hundred came back positive. Only six women had babies. According
to a report published by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 52 percent of
abortion patients are women under 25.
Why are so many students aborting? Do all of them want to abort, or is
it that, without financial and psychological support, those who might
want to keep their babies have no alternative? According to Foster,
college clinic counselors are telegraphing a strong message about which
"choice" they expect women to make: "Most kids who've
been pregnant and told me about their experiences say that the counselor
tells them she's sorry when she tells them they're pregnant. One student
at George Washington University said that after the counselor told her
she was pregnant she automatically reached for a Planned Parenthood card
in her Rolodex.
There's only one choice that's being promoted or accepted."
The FFL quotes a 1996 Gallup Poll that showed women's views on abortion
are profoundly affected by their college experience. Thirty-seven
percent of surveyed women with high school educations were pro-choice,
while those
who completed four years of college were 73 percent pro-choice. It isn't
just education that's changing so many women's minds. The stories some
women tell suggest that it's also biased counseling and ideological
pressure.
Mary, a freelance writer who became pregnant in her first year of
graduate school, went to the university women's health center for a
pregnancy test. "When it came back positive, the nurse practically
pounced on the phone to
refer me for what she called a 'termination.' She didn't even pause to
let me absorb this life-altering bit of news, let alone ask what I
wanted to do." Other college women tell Foster similar stories.
Another former student, who is now an academic and asked to remain
anonymous, sums up her experience as a pro-lifer on campus as follows:
"alienation, cognitive dissonance, fragile relationships, and
self-censorship."
Being pro-life can be a liability even for professors. Elizabeth
Fox-Genovese, a women's studies professor at Emory University, told me:
"While I was still director of women's studies, I accepted an
invitation to speak for FFL in Rochester, New York. When word reached
Emory, people were apparently appalled, and shortly thereafter, a group
of my colleagues in WS went to the dean behind my back to complain about
my work as director. I resigned as a result of those complaints."
Sheila, who is still a graduate student at an Eastern university, says
that when a women's studies professor for whom she was assistant
teaching found out she was pro-life, she angrily accused her of
"purposely deceiving
her by not telling her this from the beginning."
No wonder humanities mandarins haven't spawned a hot new field called
maternity studies. Maybe it's time for FFL to sponsor a lecture series:
"Revisionist Herstory: Why Your Women's Studies Professors Don't
Want You to Know That Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sarah
Norton, and Victoria Woodhull Thought Abortion Was Murder." Go on.
Look it up. You know you want to.
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Check out:
InterLIFE: http://www.interlife.org/
The Bubble Zone: http://www.interlife.org/bubble/
Clinic Watch: http://www.interlife.org/clinic/
The Genetic Cleansing Project: http://www.interlife.org/gene/
The Kevorkian Papers: http://www.kevork.org/
The RU-486 Files: http://www.ru486.org/
The Morgentaler Files: http://www.interlife.org/morgentaler/
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