Dear Editor, < Last weeks Messenger cover shows a picture of a Students for Reproductive Health (SRH) event in connection with Amnestys Human Rights Week; due to confusion regarding the activities relating to National Young Womens Day of Action (NWYDA), on Tuesday, Oct. 24, we would like to clarify the actions and intent of Students for Reproductive Health in commemorating NYWDA. In doing so, we must distinguish the NWYDA vigil as separate from Human Rights Week events and from the Oles for Life anti-abortion protest. Confusion about the demonstration may have been a result of the coincidental timing of Human Rights Week events. NYWDA was entirely unrelated to events put on by Amnesty International, which we recognize has no stance on abortion. Further complicating the student bodys perception of the NYWDA vigil was the opposing vigil against all abortion, legal and illegal, staged by Oles for Life, who used the title of the SRH vigil on their fliers and were also stationed in the Buntrock Plaza. The intent of SRH in memorializing National Young Women's Day of Action with a vigil was not to protest illegal abortions, as the caption in last weeks paper states. The aim of the vigil was to protest circumstances, such as those enforced by the 1977 Hyde Amendment, that force women to resort to illegal, unsafe abortions. During the vigil, students read the stories of women who died from illegal abortions and also participated in a period of silence. It was an event of respect and remembrance and was meant as a show of support and solidarity, not as a politically charged event. Katie Greene '08 and Miranda Lubarsky '08, Members of Students for Reproductive Health (SRH)
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