Abortion panels don't budge

The key speakers of the abortion issues debates Wednesday night wouldn't compromise on presentation details - forcing students to decide which side of the issue they wanted to hear.

The main disagreement concerned anti-abortion speaker Scott Klusendorf's plan to show a video of abortion procedures.

The issue proved to be such a source of contention that Klusendorf, director of bioethics for Christian advocacy group Stand to Reason, and the Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest from Massachusetts who serves on national boards for several abortion rights groups such as the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, spoke in two different rooms.

The speeches, both sponsored by the Carolina Women's Center, occurred about a 15-minute walk apart, with the anti-abortion event in Murphey Hall and the abortion rights speech in Carrington Hall.

Ragsdale said during her speech that such presentations that project "things that look like babies" serve to trump reason with emotion.

"I refuse to lend my presence to sensationalist pictures," she said.

Klusendorf said that he acknowledges that some activists inappropriately use abortion images, but that using truthful pictures is not intellectually dishonest or manipulative. He added that abortion is a reality, similar to a war, that cannot be fully understood without pictures.

He showed a 95-second video about abortion but warned viewers of the graphic content. Many in the audience put their hands over their mouths in horror while others turned their heads away.

In the lecture hall on the opposite side of campus, Ragsdale defended the political right of a woman to choose, saying that this right is something as fundamental and definite as the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Klusendorf also argued for the natural rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution - but on behalf on the unborn child. "The fetus is a human being that deserves rights under the law," he said.

To Klusendorf, this subject reverts to his central question: "What is the unborn?" He said that life begins at conception.

Ragsdale emphasized that the heart of the issue is whether women have the right to control their own destinies. She said the argument about when a fetus becomes a person is an attempt to distract the public from the fact that a woman is a person.

"Medicine says it becomes a pregnancy at implantation, but no one can say when it becomes a person," Ragsdale said.

She also claimed that the majority of the religious community in the United States overwhelmingly supports abortion rights. Ragsdale responded to anti-abortion rights claims by noting that the Bible never says abortion is wrong.

"The Bible is not a medical textbook," Ragsdale said. "A psalm is not a scientific treatise, it is a poem."

Klusendorf said he liked to argue his case based on science and philosophy, not religion.

Members of the Carolina Students For Life said they were pleased with the turnout.

"It was an amazing success," said Stephanie Evans, president of CSFL. "I think we made some end roads in opening up dialogue about the issue. I think the pro-choicers see that we can come to the table and discuss the issue rationally."

Contact the university editor at udesk@unc.edu.