The BG News has been covering the abortion-in-the-mandatory-health-plan debate since December, so why have we only seen protests these past few weeks? Sure, both sides were hurriedly pushing for petition signatures, but how was anyone supposed to know about the petitions?
Yesterday, NARAL Pro-Choice staged a rally protesting the new health insurance plan, which doesn’t cover elective abortions.
Last week, Falcons for Life planned their rally, which turned into a celebration after the announcement that elective abortion coverage would be optional.
Both sides had their rallies after the final decision had already been made, when they should have been protesting for months, even years.
Even petition efforts showed a lack of organization. Each group acquired about 400 signatures. Sounds good until you take into account that there are tens of thousands of students attending BGSU.
The truth is, this will be the first year that the University insurance plan doesn’t cover elective abortion. For the past several years it has been included.
So why the sudden outcry against it? Simple – these “activists” had to wait for the information to fall into their laps via discussion at the USG and GSS.
If the Falcons for Life were so adamantly against abortions, they should have actively sought to find out if the University has been including it in the coverage all along.
Not to single out Falcons for Life – NARAL has been even more gravely late in its campaign.
The final decision to remove elective abortion from the coverage was made March 16. Yesterday’s protest is about a week overdue.
Abortion is a huge, world-wide issue and activist groups shouldn’t be waiting for situations to come to them. They should be actively seeking them out, hence the term “activism.”
These groups who seemingly have such passionate views and need to exercise their right to free speech should be paying attention to their local news. All too often we see groups who only focus on the easily obtained national news, jumping on the outrage bandwagon whenever it presents itself.
There is no excuse for rallies to be scheduled for March when the BG News first reported the abortion debate in December. These groups need to be on top of the news. They need to be looking for occasions to protest, this is the only way they will be effective.
