Fight Over Life
This project is created by Donnie Baker and Vennela Pasupuleti, 9th graders at the Dayton Regional STEM School. In this project they created a silhouette piece to portray the “Roe v. Wade” case in 1973 and how it relates to the “March for Life” anti-abortion marching event that started in 1974 and continues to be held annually.
For this piece, artists are making black cut-outs of figures and attaching them to a white paper background, arranging them in a way that will tell a story of how “Roe v. Wade” relates to “March for Life”. First artists draw the figures and decide where to lay them out. Then used a knife or scissors to cut them out and place them where we want them to go on the white paper. The effect is supposed to be subtle yet intriguing, with the black figures contrasting with the white background.
The sad reality is in the real world, there is still no common consensus even 40 years after the “Roe v. Wade” case, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion. Many people still think the decision should stay in place, and many people think it should be repealed, with many people who want it repealed attending the annual March for Life. There are even people, often for religious reasons, that oppose the alternative methods such as contraception and sex education that are supposed to significantly lower the amount of unwanted pregnancies in the first place. There are also individuals, some who have political power, who are basically rape apologists by blaming the victim and saying that it’s the woman’s fault for being raped. Some people even feel it’s righteous to take matters into their own hands and commit violent acts against facilities that offer abortion services (such as the recent shooting of a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado).
For our project specifically, our idea is to cut out a silhouette of a pregnant woman to be our focal point, with people playing tug-of-war over it on each side of her, with an illustration of a boy and girl sitting back to back above the woman reading books. We choose to portray it this way to show that there are different sides of the abortion debate, considering there isn’t one commonly agreed upon goal, and also to show that there are other ways to get rid of as many unwanted pregnancies as possible before we get to that decision in the first place even if you can’t completely get rid of it, which is represented by the boy and girl reading, having them larger in size to show that education can triumph over the situation.
If any of the above is going to change, then we, as a society, need to compromise. Since both sides can agree that we don’t want abortions, we should compromise and offer sex education and contraception so less people will even have this problem, and the individuals who still get unwanted pregnancies from consensual sex can put their children up for adoption. However, the individuals who get unwanted pregnancies from illegal non-consensual sex should have the option to get an abortion. There’s evidence that the fetus’ brain doesn’t actually begin to process information or is able to live outside the womb with proper medical care until 24-28 weeks into the pregnancy, which is the deadline to have an abortion, and since it wasn’t their choice to have the baby, then they should have the choice to end it. It’s a complicated answer, but this a complicated issue in itself.