A student activist group wants to highlight gender inequality.

The Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance will sponsor two panel discussions Thursday night focusing on women’s experiences with abortion rights and women’s rights to decide how they wish to live.

The first discussion, “Across the Lines: Women’s Views From Multiple Perspectives — Broadening the Dialogue on Choice” is at 6 p.m., and the second, “Broadening the Dialogue on Choice: Women’s Experiences with Abortion,” is at 8 p.m. Both will be in the LeBaron Lounge, said Ellen Daly, junior in women’s studies and vice president of Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance.

The goal of the first panel discussion is to give value on the variety of experiences from which each person comes, Daly said.

The Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance is hoping women from different backgrounds will come to the discussion to share their views on current problems, processes and regulations limiting women’s choices, Daly said. The discussion will attempt to forge positive social change, she said.

The discussion will broaden the dialogue of “choice” beyond a women’s right of choice in abortion, she said.

“We need to start to understand choice as a personal freedom that shouldn’t be regulated by the government,” Daly said. “For example, we should have the right to choose a partner. Women should have the right to fight for affordable child and health care and the right to choose to be in a relationship that isn’t abusive.”

The second panel discussion will include women who have had abortions presenting reasons why their abortions were necessary, positive, or life-saving experiences, said Nikki Feuerstein, president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance and junior in women’s studies.

The group has focused a good deal of time on the abortion issue this year, Feuerstein said. The group is worried about abortion rights being eroded by recent developments, such as the a partial-birth abortion ban bill approved by President Bush and the appointment of many anti-abortion circuit court judges across the nation.