400 Pro-Choice Letters Written

A tabing campaign to garner support for the "pro-choice" movement this week yielded more than 400 letters for a national lobby attempting to protect women's rights to obtain abortions.

The letters written at Harvard will be added to nationwide pool accumulated by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) in preparation for a series of state-wide protests and a national vigil in Washington next month, organizers said earlier this week.

The two students who coordinated the tabling, Jennifer Landeau '87 and Ashley C. Thompson '87, said they did so in response to the recent proliferation of campus "pro-life" activity, including the last month's screening of the anti abortion movie "Silent Scream."

Pro-life events at Harvard have centered on abortion as a "fetus" issue rather than a "woman's" issue, Landean said. "We want to counter the I pro-life movement and shift the terms of the debate from the fetus to the woman," she added.

Thompson said the campus pro-choice movement balanced the pralife efforts with a movie of their own, "Different Voices," in addition to accumulating support for the national campaign.

The importance of the issue at Harvard and in Massachusetts has increased since the preliminary passage of a bill which would completely prohibit abortions in the state if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 case legalizing abortion, Thompson said.

As of Thursday night county, the freshman Union yielded the most letters, a total of 196, with Adams House's 77 a distant second, I andean said. Pliot House had produced no letters-17 Lowell residents had written to congressmen and nearly 40 students in both Dunster and in Quincy did so, she added.