Copyright©2001
The Hanover Review, Inc.

Editorial: The Yuck Factor

Colleges' New Abortion Question
by Thomas White
"We have never done abortions and we never will," says Dr. Jack Turco, director of the Dartmouth College Health Service. Turco refers specifically to RU-486, the newly FDA-approved abortion pill, known generically as mifepristone. The College, he said, does not have the necessary facilities to dispense the abortion pill. While the College will not prescribe RU-486 directly and does not itself perform abortions, it will refer any abortion-seeking student to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, drive her the less-than-five-miles there, and, if she is covered by the Dartmouth Student Group Health Plan, pay for the procedure. While the abortion-rights lobby has been notably silent over RU-486 in Hanover, debate has ensued at other schools since the FDA's approval.

The College on the Pill
by Steven Menashi
A September 8 ORL presentation instructed UGAs on dealing with sexual abuse. Susan Marine, the coordinator of Dartmouth's Sexual Abuse Awareness Program, and Aaron Akamu '01, a Sexual Abuse Peer Advisor and Area Coordinator for ORL, instructed UGAs on the resources available to them on campus. Students who are at risk for pregnancy, they explained, should take "emergency contraception," or "Plan B." Marine was careful to note that taking Plan B does not constitute an abortion, since the pill only prevents a sperm from connecting with an egg or the embryo from implanting in the uterine wall. Students can obtain the pill from Dick's House. Akamu added that he had some pills in his room, and that other SAPAs also kept a supply of Plan B, which they made available to students who had problems with regular contraception. Marine nodded. The morning-after pill, however, is a prescription medication; only a doctor (or similarly certified health care provider) can legally dispense it.

"I Want You Guys to Have All the Sex You Want"
The Dartmouth Review sent a student to Dick's House to obtain the pill, and she did so after a five-minute consultation with a Physician Assistant, Anne Michaels. Michaels, like Marine at UGA Training, was sure to distinguish between the morning-after pill and abortion. While many believe that pregnancy occurs with fertilization, the position of Dartmouth Health Services is that pregnancy begins only at implantation. Still, the College’s health providers inform students, emphatically, that Plan B is not an abortion--even if the student's own convictions might lead to an alternate conclusion.

THE VIEW FROM DARTMOUTH:
Dartmouth Bags the Keg Jump by Andrew Grossman
More Funds for Gay Studies by Darren Thomas
The Big Green's Big Greenbacks by J. Lawrence Scholer
Why I Rushed the Field by Alston Ramsay

BOOKS IN REVIEW:
A Call to Arms by Stella Baer
Running Backwards by Stefan Beck
Who's a Republican? by Jeffrey Hart

MISCELLANY:
Letters to the Editor
The Week in Review
The Story of Kwanzaa

by Gordon Haff

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win great triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” —Theodore Roosevelt