By Kenny Porpora
Divisive issues were brought up Tuesday afternoon during a speech about pregnant women and their rights in the United States. This time, however, the focus was not on the unborn child, but on the mothers.
Taking on a controversial issue in the Cultural Center Theater, Lynn Paltrow, founder of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, took the stage after a credential-laced introduction by Karen Valerius, the chair of the women studies department at the University.
“We live in a nation that fights for the rights of unborn children before it fights for the mothers who carry them,” Paltrow said. “Politicians use abortion as a distraction. If you get people fighting about abortion, it will distract us from noticing that we have no sufficient healthcare or no maternal or paternal pay plan. We support the life, but we don’t value the mother and father that support that life.”
Urging to inform University students of the injustices occurring to pregnant women throughout the country, Paltrow filled her hour long speech with statistics that she said displayed the abortion issue as not the black and white, good versus evil issue society has come to know, but a gray area with endless circumstances.
“Sixty-one percent of women who have abortions are already mothers,” she said. “Anti-abortion advocates have created a mythology [about] women who have abortions and women who have babies, but it is not that simple and never was.”
A former senior staff attorney familiar with reproductive rights, as well as the war on drugs, Paltrow cited issues-such as gender, class, race, geography and politics-that she argued contributed to the mistreatment of pregnant women.
“Why are we so quick to protect the unborn, but not the mother?” Paltrow asked as she gave examples of women undergoing unwarranted caesarian sections, drug-addicted mothers imprisoned for issuing drugs to minors (their unborn babies) and women who have died due to unsafe measures forced upon them during childbirth.
According to Paltrow, there is a sense of irony in the way pro-abortion rights groups support a woman’s right to choose, having little to offer those women who want to have the baby.
Halfway through the lecture, Paltrow paused to talk with audience members, allowing them to share stories about hardships experienced by friends and relatives who become pregnant at a young age. She responded that although life as a young mother is difficult, the level of difficulty has been greatly exaggerated by groups that advocate abortion rights.
After an hour of straddling the line between pro and anti-abortion rights, Paltrow finished by showing the irrelevance of choosing sides, because the line that separates them is becoming blurred.
“We can all make a difference,” she said. “That means getting involved in government issues [and] writing letters to top congressmen, but whichever side you’re on, pro-choice or pro-life, we must begin to support the pregnant women of America. They are our mothers.”