by Jeremy Hunt
Daily Lobo
There was tension in Smith Plaza on Monday when abortion-rights groups and an anti-abortion group presented their opposing viewpoints.
Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust had posters of aborted fetuses to show students the reality of abortions, said Kortney Blythe, director of the organization's campus tours.
"If you study the history of social change, pictures are essential in changing people's minds," she said. "When people think about the word 'choice,' they think about abortion. But there's no image behind it."
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Blythe said her organization travels to 200 high schools and colleges a year.
The Reproductive Justice Coalition, a collaboration of three abortion-rights groups at UNM, handed out condoms and information about contraception.
People should focus on preventing unwanted pregnancies rather than trying to outlaw abortions, said Ambrosia Ortiz, the state's field coordinator for NARAL
Pro-Choice.
Comprehensive sexual education and available contraception will reduce abortions, but laws won't, Ortiz said.
"If you take all those steps, it hardly ever comes to the choice to have an abortion," she said. "When it gets to the point where you're making that choice, it has gone
too far."
The coalition is made up of Students for Reproductive Freedom, student chapters of Voices for Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice.
Blythe said there is no excuse for killing humans, no matter how developed they are.
"No one can argue it is not a human," she said. "An infant doesn't have any less of a brain than a 5-year-old in kindergarten who
can read."
Ortiz said the issue isn't whether abortion is bad, but whether women have access to resources
they need.
"Nobody is pro-abortion," she said. "But we want to make sure that people have a full range of reproductive options."
Student Steven Hurley said women shouldn't be allowed to have abortions.
"Nobody has a right to kill
babies," he said. "Anything that kills somebody is wrong."
Abortion is a personal choice, and women should have the right to choose to have one or not, said Shannon Niebuhr, president of the student chapter of Voices for Planned Parenthood.
"It's her body, and it should be between her and her doctor," she said. "It needs to be safe and
legal."
No matter their position on abortion, it's important for people to discuss the issue, Hurley said.
"It's a good opportunity for people to really educate themselves and see both sides at the same time," he said. "You should know all the facts before you judge."
