Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 2026

Abstract

Tucked into the back pages of the Yale Daily News issue published on October 6, 1987 sits two opposing opinion pieces: one authored by members of the student organization Yale Students for Life (YSFL), and the other written by members of the Yale Women’s Center Coordinating Committee. While each article was addressed “to the editors,” these two groups were really in conversation with each other. The left-three quarters of the page features the piece written by YSFL, titled “Pro-life merits space at Women’s Center.” The right-hand side features a shorter piece written by the Women’s Center coordinating committee entitled “Center has to uphold reproductive freedom.”

At the heart of these two opinion editorials is a fundamental disagreement over how feminism itself should be defined and who gets to claim space within it. These pieces were written after YSFL asked to become a member group that would be eligible to use the Yale Women’s Center for meetings. In their article, YSFL said they initially inquired about meeting at the Center because they believed there would have been a place for them there, citing that eighty percent of their members were women and that their advocacy addressed issues of “vital importance to women,” including abortion, reproductive technology, and poverty and homelessness of women. However, after being denied access to the space, YSFL argued that the Women’s Center had created additional guidelines for group membership specifically to exclude them on the basis of their political beliefs. YSFL argued that not allowing them membership at the Center violated the Women’s Centers statement of purpose. The spring 1987 statement of purpose emphasized that “The Yale Women’s Center is a place for all women—of every race, ethnicity, age, ability, class, sexual orientation, religion—to gather together and to explore and celebrate the richness and diversity of women’s lives.” YSFL referred to themselves as feminists who opposed abortion, and felt "disturbed" by the Center’s narrow and exclusive definition of feminism.5 YSFL emphasized that the Center readily accepted diverse views on other key women’s issues like pornography, prostitution, and surrogate motherhood, but drew the line at allowing a group that would provide a different perspective on abortion. Overall, YSFL framed the Women’s Center’s refusal to admit their group as unjustly exclusive, antithetical to supporting the "constructive exchange of ideas” as the Center set out to do, and overly narrow in terms of understanding the bounds of feminism.

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