[media-credit name=’KATE BRENNER/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]

Activists promoted safe sex practices and reproductive choice at a forum in Tripp Commons Tuesday for University of Wisconsin students.

UW Students for Choice and Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom co-sponsored the event, inviting five influential women’s rights leaders to field questions from students regarding the barriers to reproductive services in Wisconsin.

Josh Boll and Carley Zeal, UW seniors and co-chairs of Students for Choice, introduced the speakers, whose specialties ranged from the politics of reproductive choice to the historical context of the availability of these choices today.

Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, director of clergy programming for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, stressed the importance of “respecting women’s rights to their reproductive futures.”

These freedoms should be granted regardless of their religious traditions, she added.

“We are in need of a movement that looks at power,” said Judy Houck, UW history of science professor, whose research focuses on the history of the women’s movement in America.

Kelda Helen Roys, executive director of National Abortion Rights Action League/Pro-Choice Wisconsin, said discrimination exists in education and economics, preventing women of lower class status from having access to affordable reproductive health choices.

“It’s really about the media, voters and education about these issues,” Roys said. “These institutions and individuals have the power to change the political atmosphere.”

Roys added another problem is that reproductive issues are mainly “seen only as a woman’s issue.”

It is also “critically important to make major changes in the funding of health care,” added Louise Root-Robbins, a professor in UW’s School of Nursing and an influential consultant for Nursing Students for Choice.

“The funding, as well as the movement, needs to be inclusive,” she added.

Nancy Worcester, UW women’s studies professor, said students should “think globally and act locally” to promote women’s rights in the Madison community.

Houck added throughout the history of the national movement, it has been shown that “individuals can make a difference.”

Roys said the panelists’ efforts centered upon the education of youth in the Madison area about sexual health, ending abstinence-only education and broadening the topics of discussion to include birth control and emergency contraceptives.

Jessica Smith, diocese coordinator for St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Madison, who was not at the panel, said the campus area is not completely dominated by the pro-choice stance. She believes abstinence education is the better way to deal with safe sexual issues.

She added there is an incorrect “assumption that feminism is tied solely to contraceptive advocacy,” saying this view implies women are sex objects.

Panelists also said in order to make their purpose more inclusive for more women, it is important for the reproductive choice movement to advertise its support for a wide range of issues including the promotion of healthy families and allowing women to not only avoid unwanted pregnancy but to help them achieve it when that is their goal.