This past Tuesday, the state Senate Democrats stalled a bill that would put new restrictions on abortion
providers. Abortion is one of the most complicated moral issues in this nation, and an effort to change
one’s mind about the moral aspect of it is often fruitless and will end only in screaming and marred
friendships. However, I feel that the wave of anti-abortion legislation that has been sweeping through this
country’s state Legislatures for the last year or so has been wrong and has implemented, in some states,
a single view of morality that infringes on basic freedoms, or at least as established by the Supreme Court.

Under current judicial interpretation, abortion is a constitutionally-ensured right. No matter your feelings
on the morality of it, imposing strong restrictions on abortion is an infringement on that right. It is wrong for such measures to be pushed because it is limiting a constitutionally-ensured right. Legislators may not like it, but they know better. If legislators want to change this, they
must change the Constitution (or at least the way it is interpreted), and we all know this is a political
impossibility.

I am not saying that abortion should be completely unrestricted. I do not think a 24-hour waiting period
is an infringement on this right. Personally, I often go back and forth on partial birth abortion, but laws aimed at
ending abortion or causing grief in the life of those who otherwise would have had an abortion are an
infringement on this right.

I am well aware that this is a very touchy moral subject. It however is not the state’s role to implement
the morality of society’s sub sects. Some will say the civil rights movement or welfare is such an
implementation of morality. However, these were both movements to right a society that was clearly
slanted against large groups and segments of society. These were the realization of
America’s promise that “all men are created equal,” whereas abortion is not such an issue.

The morality of abortion should be handled on a personal basis. It should be the decision of the
mother and, in some cases, the family involved – not that of the state. If one thinks abortion is wrong,
they should not have an abortion.

All one can speak for is oneself. Your experiences often dictate your beliefs; in order to
understand abortion, you must step outside yourself. Try to see the world from the perspective of a
woman who has spent her entire life in an inner city ghetto, had to drop out of high school for
family reasons, can’t get a job, has an abusive father, was incestuously
raped and just learned she has become pregnant. I cannot put myself in this woman’s shoes, and it is impossible for most people. I certainly don’t want to make this woman’s life any harder than it
already is. Unfortunately, this is all too often close to reality. This is why I am pro-choice.

Over the past year, an anti-abortion wave has been sweeping through state Legislatures. More than 1,100 bills
were introduced nationwide placing stricter limits on abortion. In Kansas a law passed that, when put
into effect, shut down every abortion clinic in the state. This cannot stand. When the government ceases
to work for the worst off in society, it becomes less a force of good and more the force of ideology.

I am not saying abortion restrictions are causing the U.S. to become a theocracy, but it is an important right for the people worst-off in our society, and limiting that does nothing but cause these people
more distress and pain than life has already dealt them.

Abortion is an extremely complicated moral issue; however, because of those who have been dealt
a poor hand by fate, it is impossible to implement restrictions on it without imposing the morality of sub sects of society in a terrible way.

Spencer Lindsay ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in political science.