The Coalition for Consensual Sex, one of Boston University’s newest student groups, dove into the controversial issue of abortion with a documentary screening and discussion at the College of Communication Tuesday night.
The CFCS, in conjunction with BU Students for Life, Planned Parenthood and Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore, hosted a showing of Speak Out: I Had an Abortion and a question-and-answer session with Jennifer Baumgardner, one of the film’s producers.
Nicole Levitz, CFCS’s co-founder, said her group chose to show Speak Out at its first event because the documentary is a catalyst for frank discussion about abortion.
“This film is a great piece of art as well as a discussion-starter,” the College of Arts and Sciences senior said. “Abortion is a very important issue for many people, and there has not been a real forum on campus to talk about it. We hope that this screening gives students that opportunity.”
Speak Out features women, from ordinary college students and working mothers to well-known feminists including Gloria Steinem, telling their personal abortion stories to the camera without interruption from an interviewer or commentator. The women featured had abortions beginning in 1938 – when the procedure was illegal in the United States – through 2003.
Steinem, who had her abortion in London in 1957, said in the film that she had no regrets about her decision.
“I did not see any way that I could give birth to someone else and still give birth to myself,” she said. “That was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life.”
Baumgardner said in her post-screening discussion that she first became interested in the issue of abortion after discussions as a child with Laurie Barr, a feminist and her mother’s best friend. She said she was raised in a pro-choice family in conservative Fargo, N.D.
“I had a value system that had Christianity in it,” she said. “But [I] also supported abortion rights.”
Baumgardner funded the $50,000 picture with private donations, many from her mother’s friends in North Dakota, she said.
“I wanted to put a face on the issue,” she said. “I was tired of interviewing activists, including myself.”
Baumgardner said both women and men were eager to share their experiences with abortion with her, and she plans on shooting a second documentary entirely focused on men’s experiences. She also discussed her involvement in creating an “authentic pro-life movement,” which would provide resources to women feeling pressured into having an abortion because they have no other options.
“The words pro-choice and pro-life are not descriptive enough for how people feel about this issue,” she said.
Levitz said that the CFCS was able to get Baumgardner to attend the screening because she is a friend of CFCS co-founder Helen Lowery, a CAS senior.
The CFCS has planned three other events throughout its first semester. It will be sponsoring two lectures by the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, as well as a lecture by Leora Tanenbaum, author of Slut, Levitz said.
Levitz said the CFCS hopes to initiate a more frank discussion about sex-related issues at BU.
“The CFCS was formed to focus on rape and sexual assault on campus, but also to bring sex education and sex-related issues to campus,” she said. “We are proactive and want to initiate the conversations that people have been too afraid or too lazy to have.”