By
The Wildcat Opinions Board
Last week the Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion pill mifepristone, which terminates pregnancy within the first seven weeks. However, the pill - also known as RU-486 - will not be available at UMC because of a 1972 Arizona State Legislature edict that prohibited abortions at the campus hospital - surgically or not.
The legislative agreement handed down an ultimatum: if the University of Arizona was to receive funds for a new football stadium, the University Medical Center could not provide abortions, thus preventing medical students from learning how to perform them.
Although the bylaw was cleverly paired with the notion of not having a sports stadium, this was probably more about allowing a conservative political body to slip by its views than to make a statement about sports taking precedence over medical issues. Rather, it is a statement about staunch conservatives wanting to ensure their moral views were turned into law - even at the cost of future doctors' educations.
Right-wing lawmakers put a stranglehold on the education of UA medical students, preventing them from knowing how to perform a common, potentially-lifesaving operation. Despite the fact that abortions are legal in Arizona, and UA boasts the only medical school as well as one of the largest medical centers in the state, a doctor trained at the UA does not have the skills to provide abortions.
Presumably, leaders in Arizona's medical profession would like to see a gynecologist trained in the state remain here, but when the doctors are lacking the knowledge to perform an abortion, they are more likely to head elsewhere to set up practice.
Pro-life legislators turned a moral judgment into law when they put a prohibition on abortion at UA. But that agreement was struck 28 years ago - Arizona needs to keep up with the times. The typically conservative state has started becoming increasingly moderate, sending more Democrats to Washington and showing more favor to Al Gore than George W. Bush among voters.
The arrangement was made while America was in the throes of the abortion debate - the next year, the Roe vs. Wade case made abortion legal in the United States. Always a controversial subject, abortion was especially at the forefront of American political thought in the early 1970s, and the decision of the state legislature showed their conservatism at that time. But this is 2000, not 1972.
Allowing UMC doctors to administer RU-486 - which has already been used in Europe and China for 12 years - would not represent a fundamental shift in the abortion debate. The pill is merely another method of terminating pregnancy - the end result is the same as a surgical abortion. However, allowing the drug at UMC would create a more contemporary political and medical atmosphere.
To show that abortion is an undeniable fact of the 21st century, and continue their political trend toward the middle, Arizona lawmakers should reverse the antiquated mandate that the word "abortion" not be uttered on the UA campus and allow UMC to give RU-486 to its patients.
This editorial represents the collaborative stance of the Arizona Daily Wildcat Opinions Board.
