Last week, The Daily Texan ran an opinion piece entitled “Stop Patriarchy protester: Don’t give up the fight for abortion rights,” by Adrienne Luendo. As a student at the University of Texas and the president of our pro-life organization, Texas Students for Life, I feel that the group is woefully misguided. 

Many students have seen Stop Patriarchy loudly proclaiming their mantra of “Abortion on demand without apology” on the Drag, outside the Governor’s Mansion and even at events such as Batfest. Although the group claims to be a champion for women, I beg to differ. As Luendo herself points out, in our era of legalized abortion, 47,000 women die annually from botched abortions. This is a rate nine times higher than that of when abortion was illegal, according to Luendo’s own statistics. Clearly, legalized abortion is doing no favors for women’s health.

Since certain provisions of HB 2 — the Senate version of which state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, filibustered and the very legislation that Stop Patriarchy is protesting — call for abortion facilities to meet higher medical standards, is it not in the woman’s best interest to be “treated” at a facility that meets these standards? I use the term “treated” loosely because I see pregnancy — that is, new life — as a blessing and not as a disease. Although it decries the massive number of deaths caused by botched abortions, Stop Patriarchy does not support legislation that would make facilities safer. Instead, they would prefer a greater number of less safe clinics to a smaller number of safe clinics. It would appear that Stop Patriarchy’s views on this topic are inconsistent at best. Although I support HB 2 because I know that the new restrictions imposed would shut down clinics and result in the saving of human lives, I also support it because it shows compassion for the health and safety of the abortion-minded woman.

The greatest difference between the pro-life community and the pro-choice community (including Stop Patriarchy) is that pro-lifers celebrate life in all forms: the unborn, disabled and men and women alike. The pro-choice community fails to see the unborn (especially the disabled unborn) as deserving of human dignity. In fact, to the pro-choice community, the value of the unborn seems to rest solely upon how wanted they are. If the mother wants the child, then we are excited for her baby and will go so far as to pick out names, buy gifts and even talk to her swollen belly. On the other hand, if the child is unwanted, it suddenly loses the title of “baby” in favor of the popular “blob of cells” or “fetal tissue.” Here lies another inconsistency where society is defining life based on whether the mother wants the child, rather than on objective science.

In the article, Luendo writes that it “is immoral to force [the woman] into motherhood against her will” and that during the group’s stint in jail, they “were treated as less than human.” I empathize with Luendo, for no one should be treated without dignity and respect. Nonetheless, her hyperbole is equally applicable to the atrocities she is condoning, as it is immoral to force the unborn to die against their will, and it is likewise immoral to treat them as less than human.

Morgan is a government junior from Houston.