A former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America still remembers believing an end had come to the battle for reproductive rights.
"When I joined Planned Parenthood in 1974, they weren't politically involved. It was one year after the Roe v. Wade decision, and it was a time when everyone thought, 'OK, we've won.'"
But 30 years later, Gloria Feldt finds herself rallying the next generation of reproductive-rights advocates around rapidly disappearing claims.
More than 100 students, most of them female, came to hear the previous president of the largest pro-choice organization in America assess the state of reproductive rights today.
Feldt described the "recent backlash" against abortion and said that it is an inevitable result of the social change realized in the last half-century.
She urged people not to reduce the conflict to a debate over abortion, but to understand the threat to many different choices women must make.
One of Planned Parenthood's recent battles, over access to emergency contraceptive Plan B, which the Food and Drug Administration refused to authorize, played a large part in Feldt's argument.
The drug "could prevent half of unwanted pregnancies -- just think about that -- it's huge. You'd think everyone would rally around" it, she said.
She lamented media coverage that constantly tries to strike a "false balance" on what she sees as clear-cut health initiatives.
"There's no 'other side' to health care," she said. "There's no 'other side' to Pap smears."
Feldt also stressed the power of personal stories, recalling her own experience as a teenage mother and wife, and how birth control "saved her life" after an exhausting three pregnancies in five years.
At the end of the talk, she opened up the floor, encouraging participants to suggest their own answers to questions others raised.
A discussion of the upcoming Senate race in Pennsylvania followed, in which some participants expressed complete disillusionment with the choice between two anti-abortion candidates, while others said that it is necessary to support the lesser of two evils.
There was also the question of how to get men involved, to which Feldt responded by asking men in the audience to share the reason they were there.
Attendants were clearly very excited after the event.
"Amazing," said Rebecca Nerenberg, a fourth-year medical student. "Amazing woman, amazing story. I'm just sad that the room wasn't completely packed."
