Since the news of this incident broke, there has been much commentary from anti-choice groups. Some of their coverage contains subtext arguing that this single incident is evidence that pro-choice persons are violent, criminal, and most significantly, make bad parents. Anti-choice organizations are attempting to make the focal point of the story the fact that the Kampf parents were trying to force their daughter to have an abortion.

In fact, this story highlights the importance of every woman’s right to make individual choices about her reproductive destiny. As a legal adult, Katelyn Kampf made a choice about her body and her future, and her choice was disrespected in a degrading, abusive and horrible way. But as Katelyn’s experience makes headlines, I wonder about the young women all over the United States who face the same choice that Katelyn did. Many of them are women with a lot in common with Katelyn – bright, honor students attending college, from nice neighborhoods and upper-middle class families – who are faced with a choice about their unplanned pregnancy.

Though Katelyn was tied up and forced into a vehicle against her will, all of the young women who face the same fate are bound and gagged by current choice restrictions. They might be bound by parental consent laws, or by lack of information and comprehensive sex education. They might be bound because once-accessible abortion providers have left due to intimidation and threats on their lives and clinics.

Supporting family planning and a woman’s right to choose, means supporting Katelyn’s right not to have an abortion and become a parent, as well as another young woman’s choice to delay beginning a family in the pursuit of other goals. The Kampf parents deprived their daughter of the right to make her own reproductive choices. Should our lawmakers continue to do the same?