If the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, 20 states would outlaw abortion, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America President Kate Michelman. Currently, NARAL literature states that 43 percent of women will likely have an abortion by the age of 45.
"The time we live in is not good," Michelman said.
Michelman came in time to rally approximately 75 students, staff, professors and community members for the April 25 March for Women's Lives in Washington D.C.
The timing was also crucial, according to President of Penn for Choice Katherine Lee, "because there is no other time when reproductive rights in the United States have been more under threat."
The speech was a joint effort of Penn for Choice, Penn Coalition for the March for Women's Lives, Penn Democrats and Penn's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Penn for Choice member Niva Kramek highlighted the importance of Michelman's presence on campus because "this year is an election year, and Kate's also here to promote the March for Women's Lives. There is no time when activism is more necessary."
Michelman's speech gave the audience a broad picture of the status of women's rights.
"We're a nation that has struggled to realize the promise of our democracy," she said. "The right to choose is the Rosetta Stone of politics. In this right is many other liberties that flow through it. In this issue is more than meets the eye."
Michelman's speech was based in the personal experiences of real women who had been "humiliated and degraded" by abortion laws.
Among the experiences she related was that of an impoverished 11-year-old girl from Mississippi, impregnated through rape, who had to travel overnight to the one abortion provider in the state.
With each story, Michelman reiterated that legislators "have no business interfering in the medical trauma that women face and in the private doctor-patient relationships."
Michelman also spoke about her own traumatic abortion experience as a young woman in Pennsylvania, abandoned by her husband and left with three children. In order to terminate her pregnancy, she was forced to have a therapeutic abortion by being declared "mentally unfit" with written permission of her husband. Undergoing the procedure alone, she told the audience, "transformed my life. I wake up every day to make sure no other woman is degraded like that."
Aside from her personal experiences, Michelman highlighted the importance of comprehensive sex education, safer abortions and the dangerous possibility of birth control being outlawed in the United States after President George W. Bush's legislation last week granting separate legal status to embryos and fetuses.
"Outlawing birth control is not a fantasy," she said. "We need to make an effort to show [the abortion debate is] about birth control, too."
When asked what her specific goals were for the march, Michelman replied, "To give voice to fundamental rights and values, to mobilize and to impact decisions when people walk into the voting booths in November. We want to say to legislators, 'Don't you dare take any more steps.'"
Many of those attending the presentation were eager to join Michelman's mobilization efforts.
"I'm an RN, and I've seen the way choice affects women," Philadelphia resident Coleen Conlon-Dowd said. "I've been in the operating room, and I just don't think it's anyone else's right to make that decision."
Audience member and Wharton freshman Sam Kolbert-Hyle responded positively to Michelman's pleas.
"It's important that we collectively work towards upholding the fundamental right of women to decide what's right for them," he said.
