Carrying banners and posters, University students climbed aboard a bus. Five hours after they left they arrived in Washington, DC, where they joined the March for Life demonstration against abortion. After hearing prominent pro-life leaders speak at the Ellipse near the White House, the rally-goers marched up Constitution Avenue to the Supreme Court building, origin of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision.
It's news to most people that every January, usually on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, tens of thousands of people take part in the March for Life to protest abortion. In the early '90s, when the U.S. Park Service still estimated attendance numbers at Washington marches, officials reported around 200,000 people gathered for the event.
This year was the first time the University sent an organized group to the march, and the group was greeted with surprise by other marchers. "I think people reacted strongly to the presence of the University banner at the March," said junior Mike McClane. "University, I think, signifies to many people - and particularly the type that would attend the March for Life - an institution that supports liberalism, political correctness, and many cultural values that pro-lifers are not in favor of."
Most of the pro-life crowd closely follow issues in bioethics. President Harold Shapiro's advisory role to the Clinton administration and the recent faculty appointment of controversial bioethics professor Peter Singer have put University in the spotlight.
"Many of the people at the March were aware of the presence of Peter Singer on our campus, and came up to us with comments related to that subject. Overall, given University’s reputation with pro-lifers, I think many peop...
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...y of 1993 abortionist David Benjamin was convicted of murder in New York after a messy abortion killed Guadalupe Negron. Earlier that year, Angela Ruiz Hanna, a woman with no medical training who still performed abortions, killed Angela Neito Sanchez during an botched abortion. Sanchez had arrived at the clinic with two of her children.
Suresh Gandora lost his California abortion license after he perforated Magdalena Ortega-Rodriguez's uterus and she bled to death.
All of these events, with a few exceptions, were more or less ignored by the national media.
Next January, University students will again meet in Washington to march for life. Most likely, before then we will continue to see the same type of slanted picture of abortion. And although most of us won't hear much about them, the people who gather for the March for Life are still important.
Kemp, Joe. A. “Fetus of pregnant, brain-dead Texas woman ‘distinctly abnormal’: lawyers.” NYDailyNews. New York Daily News. 23 Jan. 2014.
A major theme that is seen during the Gulliver’s final adventure is the reversal of roles. For the first time in the novel, Gulliver’s crew forms a mutiny and throws him overboard. On this island, we are introduced to Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. Gulliver first meets the Yahoos; a group of humans that act like farm animals and have the brain equivalent of a horse. Meanwhile, the Houyhnhnms are an intelligent race of horses that have their own language and use the Yahoos as cattle. When reality is presented with a different face it allows the reader to make less biased opinions based on previous beliefs. Most people are completely fine with how people treat cattle as a source of food, but when we see the
In Gulliver's dream, he observes that his “teachableness, civility, and cleanliness” (2436) astonishes the Houyhnhnm, who initially takes Gulliver for a mere Yahoo. He also goes...
The facts of this case show that Roe, who at the time was a single woman, decided to challenge the State of Texas’s abortions laws. The law in that state stated that it was a felony to obtain or attempt an abortion except on medical advice to save the life of the mother (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 1973). At the time many illegal abortions were being performed in back alleys and in very unsanitary conditions. Therefore, some states began to loosen up on abortion restrictions, in which some women found it easy to travel to another state where the abortion laws were less restrictive and they could find a doctor was willing to endorse the medical requirement for an abortion. Unfortunately, less fortunate or poor women could seldom travel outside their own state to get the treatment, which started to raise questions of fairness. Also, many of the laws were vague; therefore many doctors really didn’t know whether they were committing ...
Past the political satire and laughable motifs in the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, the purpose of this story is to show everything ignoble and tactless of the human species in general and that humans are truly disgusting. Also exploring the idea of a utopia. Swift uses the literary device of political satire to show how childish and ignorant human acts were. This is because during Swift's time in the eighteenth century, Britain was modernizing at this time. The reader follows the four narrative travels of the main character, Lemuel Gulliver. Each of the four voyages Gulliver has traveled to, is a different society that portrays one of the main ideals of the eighteenth century in Britain. The four places Gulliver has traveled to were Lilliput; being Gulliver's first voyage, Brobdingnag; his second voyage, Laputa; the third voyage, and lastly to the land of the Houyhnhms; being his last voyage and afterwards traveling back home to England. The experience from being exposed to these four societies has had a huge impact on how Gulliver now sees humans.
People from around the country came by any means necessary to support the march. One man from Chicago began rol...
No other element of the Women’s Rights Movement has generated as much controversy as the debate over reproductive rights. As the movement gained momentum so did the demand for birth control, sex education, family planning and the repeal of all abortion laws. On January 22, 1973 the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision which declared abortion "fundamental right.” The ruling recognized the right of the individual “to be free from unwanted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” (US Supreme Court, 1973) This federal-level ruling took effect, legalizing abortion for all women nationwide.
...rupt and immoral. As Gulliver realizes this, so does the reader, as Swift's hate for human nature is revealed through satire.
Abortion may be one of the most controversial topics in America today. Abortion is defined as “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus” (cite dictionary). There are really only two sides on people’s opinion on abortion; pro-life which means abortion should be outlawed and pro-choice which means a woman should be able to decide whether she wants to keep her baby. Thousands of protests and riots have begun due to the fact pro-life activists believe abortion should become illegal. Both sides bring valid points to support their decision that could sway any person’s thoughts. The Roe v. Wade law has allowed abortion to be legal in the U.S since 1973 (Chittom & Newton, 2015). The law “gives women total control over first trimester abortions and grants state legislative control over second and third trimester abortions” (Chittom & Newton, 2015). Ever since the law was put in place, millions of people have tried to overturn it and still
What is an abortion? An abortion is an operation to prevent women from carrying on with the pregnancy and having a baby. In other words, it means terminating a pregnancy. Also this method is called a birth control. An abortion is a legal procedure that is done around the world. Other countries, they might have different beliefs about an abortion. There is an illegal way of having an abortion. A certified doctor has to do the operation. The illegal way is when an unprofessional person without certificate or license giving the abortion. This method can be fetal and very dangerous. "Abortion is the death of a person, a living human being distinct from any other individual on this planet"(book 2).
...any of the houyhnhnms ideals that he realizes he won't be able to accept or be accepted by the people of his native land. Having learned the things he has, the world of the Yahoos is contemptible and disgusting to him. This is very evident when Gulliver finally returns to his family. "The sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt"(304). Gulliver does not want the identity of Yahoo and can't stand to even be associated with them. Gulliver's quest for acceptance leaves him even more isolated then ever. He was neither accepted by those in his home land nor those in any of the lands he had visited. In the end he is an outcast that passes his days talking to horses, trying to relive his happier days of partial acceptance among the houyhnhnms.
Abortion has been a complex social issue in the United States ever since restrictive abortion laws began to appear in the 1820s. By 1965, abortions had been outlawed in the U.S., although they continued illegally; about one million abortions per year were estimated to have occurred in the 1960s. (Krannich 366) Ultimately, in the 1973 Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, it was ruled that women had the right to privacy and could make an individual choice on whether or not to have an abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. (Yishai 213)
Houyhnhnm’s Land is a society unique to Gulliver’s adventures because he encounters not only horses reigning over society, but also that these supreme animals think more rationally and intellectually than the Yahoos and even Gulliver himself. Gulliver’s stay in Houyhnhnm’s Land represents the “perfect”, but emotionless and detached conventions of utopia. According to Dr. Joyce Hertzler’s The History of Utopian Thought, utopians hold a false view of society so that when developing their “perfect” social order they think nothing of “…over-riding natural affections and balking natural desires and impulses” (304). Life is really nothing but a systematic social order if devoid of all emotion, causing one to question the “perfection” of utopia. If one looks beneath the surface of the Houyhnhnm’s culture, one will find that Gulliver’s final journey does not describe an immaculate society, but rather a visionary world, meaning a world that is purely speculative and out of reach.
Of all the fictional peoples that Gulliver meets during his travels, author Jonathan Swift created a race of individuals who were consumed by living completely by reason and rationality. Gulliver finds this particular race as possibly the most favored of all the peoples that he encounters. “In his love of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver accepts an idea of perfection which makes it impossible for him to understand or participate in human life” (Nichols, 1154). According to Gulliver the Houyhnhnms have no point of being problematic, but in fact he refers to these individuals as different from humans because they are “mingled, obscured, or discolored by passion and interest” (Swift, IV, 8). It is this admired quality which makes Gulliver want to make this fascinating land his home. This paper will discuss the characteristics of Swift’s Houyhnhnms, the good and bad aspects of their life of reason, and the different characteristics of the Yahoo’s, in comparison.
...s. Gulliver is able to sail to Japan, and from there, he travels back to England. On his fourth and final journey, Gulliver becomes a victim of mutiny and lands in a mysterious land populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses who rule the Yahoos, savage humanlike creatures. He becomes great friends with the Houyhnhnms, but when they realize that he physically resembles a Yahoo, they banish him from the island.