Looking to today"s 29th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, state Sen. Alma Wheeler Smith said this weekend that it"s essential to continually address the issue so a woman"s right to choose will never again be taken away.

University Students for Choice/Vox organized Sunday"s event with the intention of honoring Jane Roe and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. while combining women and minority students, said Students for Choice member Katrina Mann, a third-year Rackham student.

Smith (D-Salem Twp.) opened the speaker panel with a background of historical legislative patterns and obstacles that allowed abortion to become legal.

"Protection of our civil rights takes eternal vigilance," she said.

Smith focused the direction of her speech on the danger and risk of the reversal of the Supreme Court"s 1973 decision legalizing abortion because of the community"s decreasing activism.

"Everyone says this is a pro-choice state, but there"s nothing in this legislature that says we"re pro-choice," Smith said.

Smith"s encouragement and strong enforcement for more community involvement had an effect on many students. "I was delightfully surprised at the emphasis of political action," Mann said.

Planned Parenthood senior educator Rhonda Bantsimba was the second panel speaker, relating the issue of race and the right for a woman to choose.

Bantsimba said women should have control over their own bodies, and no one else should make a decision concerning their bodies.

The statistics she integrated into her speech sent gasps of surprise through the audience. Half of all women have an abortion in their lifetime, while two-thirds of these women intend to have children in the future, and Catholics are as likely as all women to have an abortion, according to Bantsimba.

Nesha Haneff of the University"s women"s studies department and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, was the last panel speaker.

She voiced concerns about people being more interested in making money than in making a difference.

She said the problem is that a university educates students to be the same, not to go against the status quo.

Haneff challenged the 70 attending students at the Michigan League to work with the community and stand up for what they believe in, especially if that is different or risky in their future careers.