A lot of people have been talking about the anti-choice billboard truck that cruised around campus Monday and Tuesday of last week. So let me throw in my two cents and maybe we can buy some logic.

First of all, we have to evaluate the group behind the billboards. The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform states that it “is working to establish prenatal justice and the right to life for the unborn.” One of its main ways of getting its point across is through signs, such as the ones seen on the truck last week. But the group has signs that compare abortion to the attack on Pearl Harbor and even Sept. 11. Other posters compare it to genocides in Africa and Yugoslavia.

Another sign features a collection of pictures of aborted fetuses with a quote from Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who that reads, “A person is a person, no matter how small.” This argument, however, is vacuous. A fetus is not a human being. It is attached to its host, usually called a mother. It feeds from the host until the host body expels it. Only after the fetus is expelled and breathes on its own can it be called a person.

This brings up the other argument used by those against abortion: the fetus may not be a human being, but one day, it will be. This is even more ridiculous. Many things can intervene in a pregnancy to cause a miscarriage. During pregnancy, a woman’s center of gravity shifts. A potential mother could fall down and harm the fetus. If we were to say that the fetus would have been a human, then police could charge the mother with murder.

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform is fighting for control of a woman’s body. And it is planning to take the fight to the Supreme Court at a time when John Roberts has taken his seat as Chief Justice and Harriet Miers is bound to be confirmed to replace Sandra Day O’Connor.

In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that denying a woman an abortion is a violation of privacy laws. Roberts has said that he believed the case was “wrongly decided.” And according to Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, both Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht and U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade of Dallas told him that based on their knowledge of Harriet Miers, she would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Instead of protecting the future children of the United States, overturning Roe v. Wade might actually put more children at risk. If parents don’t want a child, they probably wouldn’t be the best caregivers. So, the kid may be abused.

Roe v. Wade also protects the health of women. Before abortion was made legal, some women performed abortions upon themselves using coat hangers. Sometimes the hangers were not sterile and caused infections and death.

It’s more important to protect the lives of living, breathing human beings rather than theoretical ones.

Allen Hines is a freshman pre-journalism and mass communication major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].