Reason reigns the

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Mary Fan

On this campus, at least.

Weeks after emergency contraception, popularly known as the morning after pill, has come to the Campus Health Center, protest has remained curiously muted.

Muted despite the contraceptive's rough entry into America elsewhere, as abortion foes, including Rebecca Lindstadt of the American Life League, decried it as " killing an unborn child before its life is even begun."

Muted despite the fact that the Campus Health Center is partially supported by the university and thus, emergency contraception being offered there is an implicit nod by all on campus that this potential abortificant is welcome here.

This is not to say the pill ought not be welcome.

That the morning after pill has come to campus is testimony to the beauty of public institutions, which need not kowtow to fractionalized groups bent on blocking others from choosing the route right for them. The move reaffirms again that "public" means a n institution may opt for the greater good for its constituents, guided by the utilitarian principle of serving the greatest number.

And there is no denying that on a campus where, according to the Campus Health Center, 57 percent of students are sexually active and 71 percent have had sex in the last year, having the morning after pill is the good for the greatest number.

But public institutions, like the democracies that foster them, spawn vocal fractions as well.

And that's why the dearth of protests over the Campus Health Center's decision to offer emergency contraception is surprising - and heartening.

By the very narrow rules anti-abortionists use to denounce abortion, emergency contraceptives when used after intercourse are identical to what is traditionally called abortion. Pro-lifers have long contended that once an egg is fertilized - whether it be in the first 72 hours following conception or months later - an egg is a child with an inviolable life.

In their quest to eradicate even early-term abortions, they have even rejected St. Augustine's notion that a fertilized egg becomes a person much later into pregnancy, when the fetus begins to take the human form associated with the classic Judeo-Christia n notion of a soul.

The majority of pro-lifers say once fertilized, an egg constitutes a child. And ridding oneself of that egg is not permissible. It is abortion.

The morning after pill artificially boosts estrogen and progestin levels in a woman, creating conditions where the fertilized egg cannot plant itself in the uterus, thus inducing an abortion by the pro-life definitions.

Now imagine that abortion as we typically envision it - suction tubes rather than pills - comes to campus. Envision the angry protests that would flare across campus if that were to occur.

Certainly a greater thunder than the peeps now.

So why the difference?

Perhaps the lack of protest is born of an intuitive, rational knowledge that an egg merely fertilized is not a child. Perhaps the term "abortion" and the traditional picture of abortionists are like red flags that raise the irrational emotionalism and con ditioning that fuels the anti-abortion movement.

Perhaps pro-lifers believe as they do less because of principles and careful reasoning and more because of conditioning. The arguments are thrown up after the fact, after hearts are stubbornly sealed, minds tightly closed.

How else can we explain why the fury of pro-life protests are not revisited now, when the red-flag words and images are taken away from a process essentially the same as abortion by the definitions anti-abortionists use to define abortion as wrong.

But wait, anti-abortionists may reply, we disapprove of the pill, we would never use it ourselves, but our distaste for emergency contraception is simply not reason enough to block the access of others needing it.

Clearly this statement is implicit in the silence.

And this statement is what pro-choice people have been saying all along.

We find abortion a distasteful easy way out. In cases of people who frequently abort because of "loose irresponsible" lifestyles, as pro-lifers put it, we also find that lifestyle distasteful.

But we will not allow our distaste to limit the freedom, the self-autonomy of others.

Because reason, when allowed to surface, never allows subjective emotionalism to arbitrate the lifestyles and lives of others.

That is simple tyranny and, given a moment of clear reflection as the sanitized morning after pill allows us, we would not subject our fellow students, our fellow equally self-autonomous, rational people, to that.

Mary Fan is a molecular and cellular biology and journalism senior. Her column, Skyfall, appears every Thursday and she can be reached via e-mail at Mary.Fan@wildcat.arizona.edu.