It is crucial to acknowledge that people who advocate reproductive rights do so for a lot more than just abortion. As the mission statement for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy firm, says: "Reproductive rights, the foundation for women's self-determination over their bodies and sexual lives, are critical to women's equality … [Reproductive rights] must allow women the freedom to decide whether and when to have children. They must respect women's ability to exercise their reproductive choices without coercion. They must also secure women's access to basic health services, including contraception, abortion, education and safe pregnancy care. Ultimately, reproductive rights are imperative to ensuring justice for all members of society-women, children and their families."

Yet at the end of the day, in America today, when discussing reproductive rights, abortion inevitably takes the stage. It certainly did on Tuesday, Oct. 21, when the U.S. Senate passed the so-called "partial birth abortion" bill, the first federal ban on a specific abortion procedure. This ban is very similar to a Nebraska law that was challenged and ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court in 2000 in Stenberg v. Carhart. The federal bill makes broad, vague prohibitions that could ban several common, safe abortion procedures used early in the second trimester, rather than limiting the ban to a specific procedure.

In addition, the current bill contains no exception for health emergencies that happen to pregnant women. As found by the Supreme Court in Stenberg v. Carhart, this lack of a health exception is unconstitutional. It is also degrading and insulting because it fails to recognize the importance of life and health in the woman.

In 2002, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which represents over 90 percent of all ob-gyn specialists, stated: "There are circumstances under which this type of procedure [included within the abortion ban] would be the most appropriate and safest procedure to save the life or health of a woman … [This bill is] inappropriate, ill advised and dangerous."

We should not forget the punishment that the bill imposes: anyone found violating this bill can face up to two years in prison. I am troubled that doctors may not be able to consider the best possible treatment for their clients out of fear of criminal charges.

Clearly, there are many people in this country who do not support a woman's right to choose what happens to her own body. Those people have been very creative in enacting laws that chip away at many reproductive rights, discourage abortion and insult women's autonomy. The "partial birth abortion" ban is one example. Mandatory waiting periods, in which the state dictates that a woman must delay her abortion for a certain number of days after receiving state mandated information, is another such example. Such waiting periods force women to make multiple trips to clinics and insult them by presuming that they have not thought long and hard already about whether they want to have an abortion.

Adolescents often receive the brunt of this anti-choice sentiment in the form of parental consent laws. Thirty-five states require that teens at least notify a parent before receiving an abortion. The problem is that legislators haven't considered why such a bill would be necessary in the first place. We must realize that those teens who don't include their parents in their decisions have reasons for doing so. Perhaps the parents of these teens would force them to carry the pregnancies to term. Perhaps they would become abusive if they heard the news. Perhaps the young woman who wants the abortion feels that she is mature enough to make such a decision on her own. Perhaps it is her father who has impregnated her.

I worked this summer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, the legal advocacy firm mentioned above. One of my jobs there was to identify how many teens take advantage of the judicial bypass petition, which is an exception in most parental consent laws that gives teens the option to go to court and petition a judge for permission to get an abortion, as opposed to "petitioning" their parents. Picture the degradation that a young woman must endure, standing in a court of law, asking for authorization for one of the most personal acts she will ever endure.

If that degradation isn't bad enough, the logistics make it nearly impossible. My task was to call offices around the country and find out about the judicial bypass procedures. The most memorable were the receptionists who would hear the emotionally-charged word "abortion" and end our conversation immediately with the phrase, "I don't know anything about that." How is a scared, in-crisis teen supposed to navigate such a court system?

Choice can be hard to rally around because the concrete benefits aren't necessarily seen as something to rejoice in. No one wants a teenager to have to go to an abortion clinic on her own, without telling her parents. No one is advocating sex without birth control, making emergency contraception necessary. A woman who is pregnant and does not want to carry to term doesn't say "All right! I get to have an abortion, this is GREAT!"

Instead, for that teenager who can't or doesn't want to tell her parents, or for that woman who was raped, or the couple who simply didn't think about a condom, or for a woman who chooses to abort her pregnancy, the response to choice and access that is heard most often isn't celebration, it's deep-felt relief. "Thank goodness I had a choice. Thank goodness I had access and the means to procure it. Thank goodness I am able to decide what happens to my body and what happens to my future," they might say. Choice allows for autonomy and individuality-two cornerstones of democracy.

The passing of the so-called "partial birth abortion" ban shows that anti-abortion groups have worked hard to provide gruesome images and inflamed rhetoric about certain procedures. In terms of public relations, these groups are talented, but they certainly don't address the multiple realities of abortion.

So why do I write this column to a campus that is sharply divided in its views on reproductive rights? Certainly not with the expectation that everyone who reads it will be in complete agreement … My optimism has limits. What I do hope, though, is that each reader takes some time to challenge herself or himself to look beyond the emotion, rhetoric and abstractions, and see that this is an issue of reality. Consider, for a moment, what it would be like to travel in another's shoes.

Ask yourself: "What if I were a woman who had sex-willingly or not-and I became pregnant. What if I had to drop out of school? What if I had to see all of my future plans disintegrate, while my partner, who contributed equally to this pregnancy, could move on with his life relatively unchanged? What if, most importantly of all, I don't want this pregnancy to happen to my body?" As access to women's reproductive rights diminish, these questions become more and more relevant and commonplace. Those who don't have to ask them are lucky. Those who do can be desperate.

I challenge all of us to further consider the fact that our belief systems and our "ultimate truths" aren't identical to everyone else. We must be cognizant that we don't live in a country with a state-sanctioned code of faith to which everyone must adhere.

Last week's passing of the "partial birth abortion" ban was a step backwards for the people of this country. Until women are able to control their reproduction completely, enjoy sex without fear of repercussions (just as much as their male counterparts) and have sex that occurs only with approval and consent, any talk of true equality will be meaningless.

I want to live in a world where people can live fulfilled lives, based on individual and personal choices. I want to live in a world where all people can steer their own paths. I want to live in a world where there is justice for women, children and their families. Don't you?