Lack of Grad Parent Aid Shows Harvard is Pro-Choice

To the editors:



Re: “Harvard Lags in Grad Parent Aid,” news, Apr. 12.

Angela Sun’s article on Harvard grad schools’ lack of support for students expecting a child was a hard-hitting piece, bringing up a human rights, gender equality, and health care issue that has long been ignored by the Harvard administration. Where are the services for expecting students?

Harvard is unabashedly pro-choice and through its many departments offers abortion services, funding elective abortions through the University Health Services (UHS) health plan. And yet when it comes to services that assist women in maintaining their pregnancies, Harvard’s promise is empty. Harvard and most of the pro-choice establishment agree that choice should be preserved in the hands of individuals, but in reality, this choice has not been extending both ways and investment in the “keep the child” option has been absent. Especially at the college, where pregancies are even a scarier reality for students, Harvard is a dismal failure in preparing and counseling students who are pregnant and decideto give birth.

A little more than a year ago, Harvard Right to Life conducted a survey and spoke to a number of Harvard administrators about the procedures for college students who get pregnant. When asked, many deans actually admitted that they either did not know how many college students have been pregnant and given birth or were unsure of the procedures. The fact is the procedures are often unclear and unpublicized and often, the options are unappealing. Pregnant students or students with children do not have outlined rights in the student handbook informing of their options in terms of Harvard housing, academics, or social life and the college has no Family Life counselor or child care referral specialists — both positions that are vital and are “life-lines” to many desperate young people that are expecting children.

Clearly, when it comes to choice, Harvard’s commitment is one-sided and at the end of the day, all sides—whether pro-life or pro-choice—lose because of the administration’s inability to establish and publicize policies on the matter.



JEFFREY KWONG ’09

April 10, 2007

Cambridge, Mass.



The writer is vicepresident of Harvard Right to Life.