Abortion is one of the most controversial topics in today’s society even though it is legalized. But what if we lived in a different generation, what would life be like without the 1972 court case of Roe v. Wade?

A new art exhibit in the Willard Wankelman Gallery showcases the debates and struggles that women and society went through before the monumental court case.

Based off of the novel, “Wake Up Little Susie,” Cathleen Meadows, Kay Obering and Kathy Hutton use mixed-media to inspire their stance on the topic of abortion titled “Wake Up Little Susie: Pregnancy and Power before Roe v. Wade.” The exhibit is joined by Lisa Link’s “Warnings” which is a series of photo and video montages relating to the topic of abortion.

The gallery starts off with a series of framed posters with cut newspaper and magazine clippings, which introduce the main piece of the first floor, a chess board.

According to the University Fine Arts Center Galleries, “They use the chess game and adaptations of chess pieces to represent the positions occupied by unwed mothers, other unwillingly pregnant women, and those who responded to these women in the decades before the legalization of abortion.”

The chess pieces are shaped in cylinders made of wire. Placed on each piece are items that describe the way society looked at the individual women. An alarm clock lays across the neck and a picture of the Virgin Mary is used as the head of one of the “deviant” women (chess pieces).

The chessboard consists of black and white squares, which is supposed to demonstrate that the issue of abortion and single motherhood is simply good or bad or in this case, black or white. The second floor of the exhibit relates to the “Warnings,” which consists of computer generated images along with a video montage inspired by Lisa Link.

Across the walls are computer generated posters which spout interesting facts and subjects related to propaganda that also try to get viewers to understand the artist’s stance on abortion.

“The propaganda techniques of the anti-choice movement made me furious. Anti-abortionists equated pro-choice supporters with Nazis,” Link said. “They published slogans such as ‘Auschwits, Dachau, Margaret Sanger: Three of Kind,’ ‘Abortion is the American Holocaust’ and in response to Gunn’s murder, ‘abortion makes the Nazi holocaust pale’ in contrast.”

On two of her posters she puts, in bold, a line from an American decision and then, in faded gray she adds what she really thinks they mean, quoting from the Nazis.

One poster read: “The Government can make a value-judgement favoring childbirth over abortion and selectively fund a program to encourage certain activities it believes to be in the public interest,” Chief Justice Rehnquist citing the “Gag Rule” of 1991.

The faded gray portion reads: “Your body does not belong to you but to your blood brethren … your volk,” a Nazi pamphlet that advocated the start of a national birth drive in 1935.

The exhibit collaborates the visions of four women that have strong stances on the ethical and moral obligations of abortion, creating a sense of what life really was like before the legalization of abortion in 1972, while informing of the facts.

The exhibit can be seen at the Willard Wankelman Gallery in the University’s Fine Arts building through January 31.