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The Rice Thresher
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Undergrounds patrons should be considerate To the editor: Last Friday night, I went with a group of friends to hear Katie Soper perform at the Lovett Undergrounds. Our enjoyment of the evening was interrupted as the room became louder and louder until we could barely hear Katie's voice over the din of the crowd. I understand that the Undergrounds is a public, social event, but there is a point at which friendly chatting becomes disrespectful to both the performer and other audience members. The Undergrounds is not a coffeehouse with live music in the background, it is a venue where talented students share their music. There just happens to be free coffee in the back. If people continue this disrespectful behavior, I would not be surprised to see the Undergrounds lose many of Rice's talented performers. In December, much of the student body fought back when the administration tried to silence student expression. Now we're the ones doing the silencing by drowning out our friends and neighbors.
Polly D'Avignon Jones sophomore
Abortion column contains faulty logic To the editor: Randy Meissen's anti-choice column ("Not everyone has a choice in abortion issue," Jan. 26) is reductionist. I am offended that he conflates abortion with genocide and racism - those atrocities involve hate, while abortions do not. I also refute his implication that many abortions are partial-birth; those are rare, and many people who are pro-choice do not condone them. Also, his use of great feminists in support of anti-choice is flawed. He neglects to mention pro-choice feminists like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. We don't allow children legal choice (in contracts, voting, etc.) until age 18. The choice being protected is the mother's. To suggest otherwise smacks of the Victorian cult of domesticity, which believed that a woman's proper function was as a wife and mother. Back then, they saved the child and sacrificed the mother. I deny any attempt to force women to sacrifice their prior existence, the investment of their family, friends and themselves in their own well-being, for the sake of an entity which is denied legal choice in many other ways. A woman faces a painful lack of choices when she becomes sexually active. High schools often preach abstinence over contraception and give little information about sex, so she is more likely to become pregnant. The pill is expensive for many, and although insurance agencies will cover $15 per dose for Viagra, often they won't cover $15 a month for the pill. Abortions are expensive and finding prenatal care is difficult because family planning funds have been cut. A pregnant woman in school probably has to drop out because affordable daycare is rare. Because she hasn't finished her education, she has trouble finding a job, making her more likely to go on welfare, which conservatives don't support! Society is responsible for creating situations which are likely to increase unwanted pregnancies and stigmatize single motherhood, then doubly penalizes women by threatening to take away their choice to opt out of those situations. In an ideal world, abortion would not exist, but the world is not ideal. We don't make policy based on ideals, we make it based on what is practical and best for all.
Kristin Necessary Jones senior
Legal actions will not solve abortion debate To the editor: I respect Randy Meissen for expressing his pro-life opinion because his heart is in the right place; however, he distorts the picture ("Not everyone has a choice in abortion issue," Jan. 26). Comparing abortion to the Holocaust or slavery is absurd. Herding six million Jews in boxcars and murdering them in gas chambers is different than a woman terminating her pregnancy because of health risks. Kidnapping millions of Africans and enslaving them for hundreds of years is different than a woman ending a pregnancy because of rape or incest. Some pro-lifers characterize pro-choice as the "pro-death" campaign, with doctors and pregnant women conspiring to murder unborn babies. But even most proponents of pro-choice agree that women should not take abortion lightly. Women should only consider abortion in cases of rape, incest and health risk. Abortion as a means of birth control or ending an "inconvenient" pregnancy should be discouraged. However, I don't understand an African American's life in the shadow of slavery, and, even as a Jew, I don't fully comprehend death at Auschwitz. I certainly have no idea what it is like being a woman, particularly one who is pregnant, confused and terrified, so I am not going to judge anyone. Until men can become pregnant via rape, we shouldn't ask, like Meissen, "How could abortion truly empower women when about half of its victims are baby girls?" Perhaps we could amend Roe v. Wade to only permit the abortion of male fetuses? Abortion is not something to glorify, but the choice to get one should be legally protected. No doctor wants to tell a raped 12-year-old girl that she has to carry the pregnancy to term because abortions are illegal. If abortions were once again illegal, they would still happen, and "back-alley" abortions would result in the deaths of thousands of women. Drugs are illegal, but how many millions of Americans are addicts? The problem that Meissen wants to fix can't be solved in the courts. It requires education and prevention of the situations that make women face the abortion issue. Until this happens, abortion must remain legal to protect the women of our society. Meissen contends that a fetus has an "inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and we must remember that this also applies to the woman.
Ari Briskman Wiess junior
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