You can’t say that!
York Federation of Students censors abortion debate at their campus; protests freedom of speech at another university
Free speech is again the centre of controversy at York University after the students’ union canceled an on-campus abortion debate last week only four hours before the event was scheduled to commence. This has some students accusing the York Federation of Students of quashing open dialogue around issues they disagree with.
“We would not have a debate over something that is racist or homophobic,” said Gilary Massa, vice-president equity of the York Federation of Students. “This debate is sexist … when it comes to free speech there is a line. … They are talking about taking away women’s rights. We would not allow a debate asking if women beating should be allowed.”
The club hosting the event, the York Students for Bioethical Awareness (SBA), invited Jose Ruba from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Awareness to represent the pro-life side in the debate. The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Awareness (WARNING: graphic content) main page features a graphic comparing abortion to the Holocaust accompanied with the statement: “When personhood is denied, the unthinkable becomes reality.” The CCBEA is behind the controversial “Genocide Awareness Project” and its large images of aborted fetuses alongside images of the Holocaust or ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.
But the graphic images were not cited by the student government as a reason for shutting the event down. Rather, the reasoning seems to be purely ideological.
“I was told in a meeting by members of the York Federation of Students that debating abortion is comparable to debating whether a man should be allowed to beat his wife,” said Margaret Fung, co-president of SBA. “They said that there is freedom of speech to a limit, and that abortion is not an issue to debate. … They were opposed to our message and they stopped this opportunity for us to express our viewpoint in the context of a debate.”
Amir Mohareb, president of the York Debating Society and moderator of the canceled debate, was surprised by the late cancellation. “[The YFS executives] were openly excited about the debate and ready to cheer on the side they support in the debate,” he said. He was initially concerned about the plan for the debate and declined the invitation to moderate at first. “We were concerned about the original plan and responded with a list of conditions to make sure it was a fair and proper debate,” said Mohareb. “They [SBA] accepted our terms.”
Mohareb and Fung have both requested a written explanation of the cancellation. Mohareb said there may have been good reason to cancel the debate but he hasn’t heard it yet: “A number of different executives said that a debate on abortion may be inappropriate to hold in the student centre.” Mohareb said that if the cancellation was because of the political issue being discussed, it would be an unacceptable attack on free speech.
However, Mohareb said that the anti-abortion speaker wanted to hand out materials featuring the controversial images. Mohareb suggested that if the YFS had opposed the debate on the ground of the offensive materials, that might be understandable. But above all, he urged the student government to explain their actions.
But in interview with Maclean’s Massa maintained that it was the topic of the debate that led them to put a stop to it. She repeatedly compared the act of banning abortion to beating women.
Although both sides are deeply entrenched in their positions, the YFS has been somewhat inconsistent on free speech in the last week. The day after the cancellation of the debate, Massa led a delegation of York students to McMaster University to protest what they called an infringement on free speech.
The YFS joined other Toronto students unions in condemning McMaster University and the McMaster Students Union for censoring a poster featuring the controversial phrase “Israeli Apartheid” and a graphic, violent image. At the rally, the Toronto unions accused the university and students union of shutting down free speech at McMaster. They called on McMaster University and students union to allow for absolute free political speech on the campus.
Massa doesn’t see the connection between the two incidents. She said that the censorship at McMaster was about a political issue while the York debate would have amounted to “hate speech.”
Ah hypocrisy at its best.
A sad day for freedom, reason & education…
What’s the point of going to university if we’re not allowed to think/ponder about certain subjects? The Thought Police at York are denying our freedom to think and come to our own conclusions. Their censorship of a DEBATE (it wasn’t an anti-abortion soapbox event) prevents us from making informed judgments about pressing issues–even if they be controversial.
The YFS is more interested in indoctrination than in education.
“But in interview with Maclean’s Massa maintained that it was the topic of the debate that led them to put a stop to it. She repeatedly compared the act of banning abortion to beating women.”
On what basis is banning abortion like beating women? According to whom? What is the evidence for this?
I could have found out at the debate that never happened.
York should offer a new course: John Stuart Mill 101.
But then again why would we want to analyze a text like this, especially in a university?
Is it not preferable to cling to gross analogies (e.g., people who like bating women are also akin to pro-lifers), and to repeat this ad nauseum without any backing.
Back to Mill, here is a great quote that deals with the abortion issue, regardless of what side you are on:
However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.
–John Stuart Mill.
Now allow me to apply this to the abortion issue, for the benefit of the YFS, since they seem a little lost in their undergraduate zeal for repetition:
Though you strongly believe in a woman’s right to choose, and are unwilling to concede that you might be wrong, you shouldn’t be alarmed if your belief is fully, frequently, and fearlessly argued. If it isn’t, then the pro-choice view will be mindlessly accepted, rather than thoughtfully accepted as essential to women’s rights…
Don’t you get it, YFS??? By stifling debate, you harm teh very beliefs that you cherish. And on top of that, what are yo so afraid of anyway? People being brainwashed? Come on. The university environment is filled with other young aduts, like yourself, that deserve the right to think thorugh complex issues for themselves…just as you presumably have re: the abortion issue. Your quarantine of public debate -in a debating club of all places-is dictorial, stomps on others opportunites for meaning ful exchange, and is downrght repulsive.
Now, yes, I am prolife and anti abortion…but I don’t have any commonground with the wifebeaters as a basis for my opinions…if you want to know what my basis; that is, the premises of my arguments, then let the debate begin…
But that won’t happen…now that I’ve actually shared an opinion, you have likely dismissed anything I have to say, which is, incidently, a serious logical flaw to do. But being undergrads and all, you would knwo little about that…
You repulse me YSF…
Ah Goodwin’s Law STRIKES again
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin‘s_law)
Touche Danny V: your cultural capital has served you well. Any thoughst on the issue?
When Ireland was suffering from Famine in the 1840s, those who sought to arouse sympathy for the Irish wrote graphic eyewitness accounts of the starving children and the disease-ridden people they encountered. One such witness wrote of visiting a cabin where “six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearance dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horse cloth. I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive. They were in fever, four children, a woman, and what had once been a man. The same morning, in another house at Skibbereen, a mother, herself in a fever, was seen to drag out the corpse of her child, a girl about 12, perfectly naked, and leave it half covered with stones.” Such graphic accounts were necessary, for both British government officials and newspaper editorialists routinely questioned the credibility of the statistical reports coming from Ireland. They refused to believe that so many people were starving to death in the midst of a “civilized” empire.
When American abolitionists sought to convince the largely apathetic population of the northern states about the moral depravity of slavery, they used a rhetoric of graphic depiction, one that aimed to arouse the conscience and offend the sensibilities of polite society. Routinely, Abolitionists would tell stories about the cruelty practiced on the plantations. According to one such account, “the master took him into the barn, stripped him entirely naked, tied him up by his hands so high that he could not reach the floor, tied his feet together, and put a small rail between his legs, so that he could not avoid the blows, and commenced whipping him. He told me that he gave him five hundred lashes. At any rate, he was covered with wounds from head to foot. Not a place as big as my hand but what was cut. Such things as these are perfectly common all over Virginia; at least so far as I am acquainted.” Now, of course, most civilized people see the moral horror of slavery and applaud the abolitionists. Then, they were considered incendiaries.
Why do Hollywood celebrities travel to Darfur, media in tow? If we did not see pictures of the human suffering there, would anybody care about the moral outrage in Darfur? Would anybody even be able to find it on a map? Are the images of Darfur disturbing? Yes, genocide IS disturbing, and seeing the images from Darfur prevents us, if only momentarily, from considering the dead and suffering there as mere statistics or as theoretical abstractions. Such graphic images require us to confront and at least consider our own moral responsibilities.
Those who object to the presence on a university campus of the Genocide Awareness Project wish that we would continue to think of abortion as an abstract “right” or a mere “choice” without consequences. If the presentation in question informs observers of the true consequences of abortion (even if it does so graphically) then perhaps the moral implications of the “choice” will be a little clearer. When pro-abortion advocates want to refer to “products of conception” and “reproductive freedom,” the type of graphic display presented by the Genocide Awareness Project can remind us that abortion has ghastly human consequences entirely obscured by these commonplace euphemisms.
If, as many insist, abortion is not an immoral choice, then it must also be appropriate (certainly not immoral) to discuss and display openly the elements, especially the consequences, of that choice. If, on the other hand, people object to the graphic display on moral grounds, but approve the activity itself, there is a disorder in their moral thinking, not unlike those who support patriotic wars, and yet object to pictures of children (sorry, “collateral damage”) who have had their arms blown off or guts torn out by bombs dropped in our name, or those (including many in the media) who don’t want to show images of returning soliders without faces or legs. A fully informed moral judgment of the matter requires that we take into consideration, not only our own theoretical advantage, but also the physical and material cost to those who are the victims of our choices and actions. When we claim something is a “good” we should be prepared to calculate the price that is actually paid (not the one we more comfortably imagine). It is the same with the moral outrage of Abortion. It DOES kill small human beings by chopping them into tiny parts and sucking them out a tube. If this is what is true, let the abortionists and those who support them defend the activity AS IT IS, and not as some mere statistical abstraction or theoretical right.
You missed an “if” in your last paragraph. One of the main points of contention for many is that what is killed is not a small human.
However, if we proceed with this, then we must also have graphic picture of what happens to teens in back alleys who cannot access legal abortion, what happens to families with an unwanted child when driven into poverty and desperation, what happens to the unwanted child when born to a mother that does not want it and has little means to support it.
We can continue trying to gross each other out til the cows come home, and it’s irrelevant to logical debate.
If you feel the mother’s right to control her own body can be imposed upon to save a life, you must also agree that anybody’s right to control their own body can be imposed upon to save a life. If you do not agree, then you merely stand for abortion as punishment for a woman (not a man) having the temerity to have sexual intercourse, and it has nothing to do with the life of the unborn at all.
Hate speech? Pro-lifers hate women? Gee. I must really have something against my vagina.
The arguments of abortion advocates at York beg the question by assuming that the abortion debate is all about denying women the rights to do what they want with their own bodies. They entirely assume the very point that fetal rights activist are trying to contest: the nature of the fetus.
The Supreme Court never ruled that the fetus was not a human, nor that it should have no rights. It simply struck down inadequate laws while calling on parliament to enact a better one in its place. The debate is far from over.
Denying anyone the right to even debate the question is not a position worthy of any intellectually honest individual or student union official.
ThinkOrThwim said: “One of the main points of contention for many is that what is killed is not a small human”
If not a small human, then what? A small chipmunk? A small chicken? A small squid? Of course abortion advocates must deny the humanity of the fetus, for to acknowledge it means confronting the gravity of the act they promote — the deliberate and unjust extermination of an innocent human being.
“then we must also have graphic picture of what happens to teens in back alleys who cannot access legal abortion”
But, of course, the abortion in the “back alley” (a tired metaphor) is not less the result of the deliberate choice of the person doing the aborting than the abortion in a clinic. One could, of course, avoid any dangerous consequences associated with a non-clinical abortion by choosing not to have an abortion.
“If you feel the mother’s right to control her own body can be imposed upon to save a life, you must also agree that anybody’s right to control their own body can be imposed upon to save a life.”
The mother’s right to control her own body is not absolute. It does not extend to an act contrary to natural law — the extermination of her own offspring. Nobody’s right to personal autonomy, nor anyone’s right to self-determination, extends to the point of denying others the most fundamental of all rights — the right to life. One could easily imagine your position in the slavery debate: “if you feel the slave owner’s right to his property may be imposed upon to accomplish the emancipation of another human being . . . etc.”
“Nobody’s right to personal autonomy, nor anyone’s right to self-determination extends to the point of denying others the most fundamental of all rights, the right to life.”
Excellent, so you agree that when someone needs a kidney or a bone-marrow transplant in order to live, it is perfectly acceptable for the government and society to compel you to donate such. I trust you’re registered with the appropriate donation banks then?
For someone with a name like ‘ThinkOrThwim’, you don’t seem to be doing much of either.
Because we are talking about something that is potentially a human life (according to the latest statistics, at least 30% of Canadians seems to think so), the onus is on those who would terminate to conclusively show that a fetus is NOT a human being. I have seen no argument put forward by the ‘anti-life’ group that does so. (I say ‘anti-life’ because one good turn deserves another, and because it is so kind of them to choose a label for us).
So while the potential, the more than reasonable doubt, remains, we cannot, absolutely CANNOT intentionally terminate something that could be an innocent human being. Don’t try to cloud the issue with nonsense about a ‘woman’s right to choose’, sob stories of pregnant teenagers or horrific fancies of back-alley abortions. As a society we simply cannot condone, let alone legitimize, the death of the innocents.
As for ‘the mother’s right to control her own body being imposed upon’, I would never claim that my right to punch Carson in the face is being imposed upon; I never had it in the first place.
Let’s introduce something else into the mix. If a pregnant woman has complete control over her own body, she must be free to abuse drugs, alcohol, and tobacco as much as she likes during the pregnancy. By the anti-lifer’s standard, the woman has done nothing wrong, and FAS is just though shit for the child and the rest of society who has to bear the burden. Do you honestly feel that the mother bears no responsibility for the effects her choices will have on the child?
The logic, and the ethics, are on the side of those who would protect human life, inside or outside of the womb.
Wow. The tide certainly has turned…It is now the domain of the more intelligent to take the side of the pro-lifers…30 years ago it was the domain of the “choicers”…Scanning the above commentary, I’d certainly say that the precision of reasoing cetainly goes to those who say the fetus is alive…The choicers, on the other hand, are clinging to their slogans, their dead dogma’s as it were, without being willing to disseminate the core assumptions in a way that their opponents do.
If the logic and ethics are to protect human life inside of the womb then there are a lot more issues the prolife movement is not exploring. If human life begins at conception, then IUD’s should be outlawed. Further, so should be outlawed invitro fertelization as there are embroes left behind that are not inplanted but frozen. Also, given that innocent life is to be protected what pought to do Canadian soceity about hungry Canadian children? We are a very special society where the government has shifted its responsibilty of the poor unto the public by cutting social programs like Ontario Works. Every holiday the media asks people to donate parishable food items. The poor became a charity case. And wonder why the mother or both parents do not want to become poorer by having the babies everytime their birthcontrol fails.
Simon,
But of course – I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or not, but it didn’t seem to me that you were.
There is no rationality in the claim that a fetus is not a human person. The opposite can be easily proven both philosophically and biologically in about 10 minutes. You’re right, the pro-abortionists have no argument, which is why they continue to cling to their personal attacks, denying status to pro-life groups and cancelling debates.
Ditto: If pro-abortionists are right, what are they afraid of? Let’s have the debate – but I can guarantee you, that anyone coming to this debate with an open mind, who is not already convinced that a fetus is a human person from the moment of conception, will change his/her mind.
Bring it on. The tide IS turning.
ThinkOrThwim: “Excellent, so you agree that when someone needs a kidney or a bone-marrow transplant in order to live, it is perfectly acceptable for the government and society to compel you to donate such. I trust you’re registered with the appropriate donation banks then?”
The perfect example of a non sequitur. To affirm that nobody has a right that extends to the taking of the life of another does not, by any rational method, lead to the conclusion that one therefore asserts every act short of the taking of a life is morally acceptable.
If a person is indeed in need of a kidney or marrow transplant to live, the charitible decision by the donor to supply same would be ethical and praiseworthy. It would be done in the interest of promoting life. No innocent person would be injured or killed.
Not that it needs to be explained, but the forced surgical of an organ (the scenario you paint) would by any standard of civilized conduct be condemned as criminal and immoral. What is peculiar is that while that standard seems clear enough in this case, you remain blind to the fact that abortion does not merely remove an organ, but indeed destroys the life of an innocent, and does so in the vast majority of cases simply for the convenience of another. It is, then, a grave injustice.
I do not think there are objective arguments to say an embryo is “human” from the moment of conception, just as well as there are no good arguments to say it “becomes” human just at the moment it is born.
However I don’t think that the positions I just paraphrased are representative of the “average” anti-abortion and pro-abortion beliefs (would that be a neutral terminology? is that even possible?), respectively. If you attack a radical, non-representative position, you’re setting up a straw man
Thank you for the coverage. I appreciate all of you who understand that free speech isn’t free if a group of student leaders decide what speech is hate and then determine to ban it from their campus.
Frankly, the only hate I’ve experienced through this is from the York Student Federation.
Just a couple of important factual clarifications:
Our group is called the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, CCBR. We’re changing the abortion debate in Canada because unlike too many pro-life groups, we are bringing debate back to where it belongs, in the public arena.
Secondly, the debating society, including Amir adhered to our only two conditions for the debate, that there would be equal time for both speakers and that there would be no censorship. Their waivering came about after their agreement.
They also never raised any questions or concerns about information we would be handing out. I was never asked about that.
Truth will always prevail and that’s why evidence needs to be examined and studied, including what abortion looks like. The York students who decided to ban pro-life speech from their school believe the same thing, which is why they went to McMaster a few weeks before the debate to decry censorship there.
If only they understood that free speech doesn’t just belong to those who they agree with.
Jose Ruba
The logic is simple, either society and the government has the right to interfere with what a person does to “save a life” or they do not. If they do, then requiring a feotus be carried to term or that a person be required to donate bone-marrow or other organ is acceptable. If not, then not.
What logic does not allow is having one without the other, unless you’re comfortable with being a hypocrite.
I never stated this was an ethical argument. Ethics are sticky business and changable. Not too terribly long ago, it was considered ethical to hold slaves as well.
But please, at least acknowledge that if the argument were really about saving a life, those against abortion would be lobbying for increased medical research and funding so that an unwanted zygote or foetii could be incubated until such time as it was viable to support its own life, and be willing to pay increased taxation dollars to accomplish this. Anything else is simply a way of saying “She spread her legs, she oughta pay for it.”
“The logic is simple, either society and the government has the right to interfere with what a person does to “save a life” or they do not.”
Well, whether the government acts in this capacity or not is a secondary matter. The government does not always do what is morally right. Neither should we necessarily look to the government as the sure guide for our own personal conduct. The government may permit abortion. That does not make abortion right, nor is it a convincing reason for anyone to have an abortion.
But to address your question directly, of course the government DOES “interfere” (or intervene) to restrict our personal action in order to save lives. It is done all the time. You are GLAD it is done, and on most such matters you are happy to have it continue. What you object to is the government interfering in the “right” of a mother to exterminate her offspring. All the other government “interference” I’m sure you applaud.
To me, it would preferable if everyone understood how to act virtuously and morally WITHOUT the government, but for now government is a necessary evil. That said, as you must recognize, the government does restrict the right of corporations to produce dangerous products. The government does restrict the circumstances in which certain persons may operate motor vehicles. The government “interferes” with the liberty of a person to fire weapons in crowded places. The government requires testing for pharmaceuticals when drug companies would prefer profits. The government constrains by taxation the sale and use of cigarettes, alcohol, and even now trans fats. All this is for the public “good,” and the ultimate good is life itself.
Abortion IS an ethical question. It would certainly be convenient for the abortionists if it weren’t, but insofar as the act of abortion involves injustice and the taking of innocent life, it necessarily involves, not a matter of mere policy or law, but questions of right and wrong. I find it interesting that you draw the analogy to slavery, for even if slavery was once considered the natural order of things, this is hardly an argument for dismissing the moral consideration of slavery. Indeed one of the reasons (perhaps the most important reason) why slavery ended was because those who opposed it (Wilberforce, Garrison, etc.) treated as a moral question, rather than as a matter of law and policy. They showed those of their day that holding property in other human beings was WRONG (not just wrongheaded).
Finally, as for the status or support of “unwanted” embryos: isn’t it then important to ask about the morality of medical procedures and policies which led to such consequences as excess embryos in the first place? But, indeed, if the means could be discovered, these human embryos should be protected, even at great expense if necessary, just as we should value above all any other human life. None are expendable — not the old, not the sick, not the poor, not the feeble, not the immigrant — simply because it costs too much to care for them, and especially not when we have funds sufficient to fight wars, buy weapons, and amuse ourselves to death.
Too bad YSF wasn’t around to add to the lively debate above; guess they’re too scared to back up their bullshit…that says alot about their real intentions (as Pedro hinted at above).
I am in my second year at York University, and issues like this have me wishing I picked another university to attend.
I found the same puzzling hypocrisy about this issue. It seems the YFS is using their funding to support their own bias.
Thank you for posting this article and drawing attention to the frustrations York students are feeling about their student federation.
[...] of wisdom for student politicians across the country looking to avoid being known as the next UVSS, York Federation of Students, or Carleton University Students [...]
The fact that feminism has essentially and basically hijacked free speech- shouldnt be suprising to your average prolife group. The agenda within feminism is anti God and antichrist and the spirit of the revolution and revolt clearly underpins the these radical groups activities. The rule of the socialist gestapo within university settings has been and is now destroying the ability to speak freely leading to even indict and arrest those who who contend against the Politically Correct social policy agenda. Big Brother has been watching us but you know that it is time to watch big brother in a covert manner
[...] U of G association made a bad choice [...]