Five pro-abortion activists discussed issues of reproductive rights in the U.S. on a panel yesterday, with several saying they feared George W. Bush would make it harder to get a safe, legal abortion.

Jen Dodge, Rosemary Candelario, Judy Norsigien, Ann Lambert and Dr. Maureen Paul were the participants in "Access Denied: the Struggle for Reproductive Rights in the 21st Century," hosted by the Harvard group Students for Choice.

"No matter which way this plays out, [abortion] will remain an important issue," said Candelario, a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, about the presidential election. "It's something we always have to be vigilant about."

The consensus among the panelists, however, was that the election of Bush would endanger abortion rights if he appointed anti-abortion Supreme Court judges.

Lambert, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Roe v. Wade does not mean that abortion rights will always be protected.

"So many of us thought that Roe meant we had won," Lambert said. "We didn't realize this was as fragile as it turned out to be," referring to the possibility that a Supreme Court under Bush could overturn the ruling.

"The president has a lot of power on the local level," added Dodge, political organizer for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

Paul praised Attorney General Janet Reno for her "no-tolerance" approach to anti-abortion violence. Paul said that when she received death threats for performing abortions, she was immediately put under Federal Bureau of Investigation protection.