Activist explains views on abortion
Though Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, there are anti-abortion activists who try to take the issue back to the Supreme Court every few years, said Angie Young, producer of the documentary “The Coat Hanger Project.”
Young, who works as an activist in Washington, D.C., came to USU Thursday to show her documentary and share her beliefs about abortion and its connection to women’s rights. Thursday was also International Women’s Day.
The U.S. has gradually become a more conservative country, she said, since radical feminist movements in the ‘70s, and women’s rights are still an issue that need to be addressed.
“The issue is so much deeper than abortion,” Young said. “The actual thing it is about is as deep as how we understand the universe. What does it mean to be a person? What does it mean to have rights? Life itself — the whole question — is pretty deep, but the question of who we are and how we function and who gets to have power over this is pretty serious.”
“The Coat Hanger Project” is about reproductive justice in the U.S., the rights women have in making decisions regarding their bodies and the realities of unsafe abortion practices. Young has traveled across the globe to speak at feminist conventions, universities and other venues about her observations as an activist for women’s rights.
Members of USU’s Center for Women and Gender invited Young to engage with students in a Q-and-A session in the TSC Auditorium. One male attended and the rest of the audience involved in the discussion consisted of women.
“No one has our backs on this issue — we have to have our own backs,” Young said.
She said many new bills proposed within state Legislature take away the fundamental rights women should have concerning their physical bodies and the right to make decisions pertaining to that body.
One of the bills proposed in multiple states suggests lengthening the time a woman must wait to have an abortion after receiving state-mandated information on the abortion procedure. This proposal suggests women seeking abortions don’t understand what they are doing, she said.
“Women don’t understand what abortion means,” Young said, implying this is what some state leaders may suspect. “They don’t understand that a baby dies — well, of course, they do. This doesn’t give women credit for having a brain. We know what an abortion is.”
One audience member, Raquel Rosario Sanchez, a senior majoring in international studies, shared an observation she had about the way television addresses abortion. She said in an episode of TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” a woman considering abortion ends up deciding against it to give birth to the infant. Also, the character Bella in both the book “Breaking Dawn” and its film adaptation decides to keep her child, though it affects her health, Sanchez said.
“She has to make a decision of keeping a child that is destroying her health,” Sanchez said. “You can see her dying, and all these teenage girls are going to see this … and believe this notion that this is how it is. It’s horrible.”
A Utah bill that will ban public schools from teaching students about contraception in sexual education was given final legislative approval Tuesday. Young said a comprehensive sexual education for all students is necessary in this day and age, and it has been proven that teenage pregnancy decreases in schools that teach students about contraception.
“I feel it’s a really fundamental part of being a person and definitely has a place in the classroom,” Young said.
Some young adults don’t want to talk to their parents about contraception if they choose to become sexually active, she said, and there are also parents who would benefit from taking a class on contraception.
Expecting students to promise they will be abstinent to school teachers is unrealistic, Young said.
“It’s a misunderstanding of sex, of youth — the whole shebang,” Young said. “It’s an unrealistic view of the wild, crazy, unpredictable nature of what sex is.”
“The Coat Hanger Project” has received national recognition and was an official selection in the 2009 Rosebud Film Festival.
– catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu