This letter from Toby Dempsey, a freshman at Otterbein, is in response to the article “Anti-abortion group comes to Otterbein campus” found in the vol. 94, issue 24 publication of the T&C.
I am upset by the choice of label that was given to me in the article “Anti-abortion group comes to Otterbein campus.”
As a part of the “spontaneous pro-abortion rally that formed across the street,” I do not feel, nor do many of the people sitting with me on that corner, rightly represented by the term “pro-abortion.”
The term was not coined by the people sitting on the corner, but instead by the writer of this article.
We labeled ourselves “pro-choice,” as evidence by the multitude of signs that were being held that day. These two terms, “pro-abortion” and “pro-choice,” are different things.
The term “pro-choice” is a term that I, and many others sitting with me, use for ourselves because we personally believe that a women’s body is her own to do with what she pleases and no one has the right to tell her anything else.
“Pro-abortion” is a blanket term that was thrown over all of us without any of us actually uttering those words.
None of our signs said we are “pro-abortion” and none of us said when confronted by a member of the pro-life group that we were “pro-abortion.”
For many of us, it was about a woman’s choice, and that is where I and many others stand.
I would greatly appreciate the changing of the word chosen in this article from “pro-abortion” to “pro-choice,” as I would hate for me or anyone else to be wrongly represented in such a public fashion.
Thank you for your consideration.
