All Posts Tagged With: "Abortion"
Big week in pro-life politics on campus
UNB ratifies pro-lifers as Carleton considers ban
There was good news and bad news this week for pro-life groups on Canadian campuses.
The University of New Brunswick Student Union has ratified the Students for Life Club, reports The Brunswickan. Amanda Magee, club president, told council that her group wants to have an open debate about abortion. They will provide information booths, but will not be seek out women directly.
Meanwhile, the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) has decided it will let the following referendum question stand in the next general election: “Are you in favor of banning groups such as Lifeline, the Genocide Awareness Project, Campaign for Life Coalition and other organizations that use inaccurate information and violent images to discourage women from exploring all options in the event of pregnancy from Carleton University?”
Pro-life groups have been controversial at the Ottawa school. The club Carleton Lifeline was decertified by CUSA after five pro-life students were arrested on campus for attempting to erect a graphic display in 2010 called the Genocide Awareness Project, which showed pictures of fetuses.
Brandon Wallingford, the CUSA Arts and Social Sciences Councillor, was quoted in a press release by Carleton Lifeline yesterday saying that the referendum question infringes on freedom of speech. “It is disturbing that there are those who wish to ban opposing points of view instead of engaging in the type of mature discussion that universities used to be famous for,” he said.
Students at Western receive controversial DVDs
Film compares abortion to holocaust
Students at the University of Western Ontario are upset that they were handed DVDs in the University Community Centre on Wednesday. The film, by Living Waters Ministry, “uses a discussion of the holocaust as a segue to promote a pro-life agenda” reports The Gazette.
Devin Barnes, a fourth-year philosophy student, said he was not happy about his gift from the pro-life strangers: “the pro-life people obviously have the right to their opinion, but this was coercion.”
Eliot Hong, from the University Students’ Council, said they require that such handouts be approved ahead of time. ”This is to ensure that groups are following the Advertising Materials Policy and are in line with the University’s environment of providing a safe, supportive campus while being sensitive to the diverse student, staff, and faculty population that are a part of Western,” said Hong.
The Christian Post, a U.S. publication, reports that “a small army of one thousand workers gave away 200,000 copies of the award-winning movie “180″ at 100 top universities around the country, in one day this week. To avoid opposition, the day and the location of each of the universities were a highly-guarded secret. The controversial pro-life video shows eight people who are adamantly pro-abortion, changing their minds and becoming pro-life in a matter of seconds…”
It’s not clear whether the group at Western was part of this particular effort, but 180 does open with scenes from NAZI Germany and a man asking students whether they’ve heard of Adolf Hitler.
Carleton asks judge to throw out discrimination case
Students wanted to show graphic images in high-traffic area
Carleton University has asked a judge to throw out a lawsuit by two members of an anti-abortion group who claim they were discriminated against by the administration, reports the Ottawa Citizen.
The school wouldn’t allow Ruth Lobo and John McLeod of Carleton Lifeline to put up a display that included graphic images of genocide and fetuses in a high-traffic square on campus known as the Tory Quad. The university offered them a more secluded space to make their presentation. The students argue that was discriminatory because animal-rights activists and Holocaust awareness groups are permitted to use graphic images in Tory Quad.
Lawyers for the university told the judge the claim is “scandalous, frivolous, vexatious or otherwise an abuse of the process of the court.” They argued that the university’s Human Rights Policy and the policy on Student Rights and Responsibilities are “internal administrative directives and procedures,” and that they do not form a contract between administrators and students.
Lobo and McLeod’s lawyer argued that Carleton University may have been acting as an agent of government and would therefore be subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including provisions on freedom of expression.
Graphic anti-abortion displays have no place near schools
Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform targets children
An anti-abortion group in Calgary has decided it is appropriate to take up on public sidewalks and parade graphic displays in front of public school students.
The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform did a tour of sorts last week, visiting at least 12 high schools and setting up poster boards of aborted fetuses in order to win over young supporters.
“Our philosophy is if someone is old enough to have an abortion, they’re old enough to see the aftermath of an abortion,” Stephanie Gray, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, told the National Post. “Many of these young people are having abortions because they haven’t seen what an abortion looks like.”
Of course, that’s beside the point. While the group isn’t technically breaking any laws, the choice to demonstrate outside public high schools is dubious at best. These types of graphic displays have typically been erected on university campuses, where they have already met their fair share of conflict. But whereas the university campus is absolutely a reasonable forum for such a demonstration, the space outside of high school pushes the ethics of public pandering.
First off, nearly all of the students on university campuses are adults. The opposite is true at high schools. The anti-abortion protesters are essentially demonstrating to children, who—unlike university students on sprawling campuses—often can’t take an alternate routes to classes. Plus, those under 16 are required to be there by law, and so, in an ideal (perhaps kinder) world, they shouldn’t have to worry about being barraged with graphic images on their way to ninth-grade geography. University students are on campus by choice, and are often morally self-assured enough to be able to critically absorb and analyze such a demonstration.
It is true that inside high schools, most kids are exposed to other graphic imagery. However, it’s usually accompanied by some sort of context and discussion. High school students learn about drunk driving, the effects of smoking and drugs, and unprotected sex and STIs — but they are usually warned beforehand about graphic images and encouraged to express concerns in a controlled environment.
Holding up a poster of a bloody fetus provides none of the context, and little of the tact required when dealing with sensitive teens. As well, whereas we can pretty much all agree that driving with a six-pack is not a great idea, the ethics of abortion is a little murkier. Graphic imagery is fine for concerns that are more or less universally shared, but trudge through dangerous ethical waters when used in conjunction with more contentious issues.
The issue is not about being pro-choice or pro-life. The issue is about finding an appropriate venue for a morally controversial and graphic demonstration. The sidewalk outside of a public high school is certainly not the right venue.
Public schools shouldn’t stifle free expression
Catholic school students suspended for pro-choice message
It seems the crackdown on dissenting ideology continues at Catholic high schools in Ontario. Two months ago, the Halton board made headlines for banning gay-straight alliances in its publicly funded schools. Now, St. Patrick High School in Thunder Bay, Ontario, has decided that its students cannot express pro-choice opinions. Because the best type of public education is an exclusionary and highly ideological public education, right?
Grade 10 student Alexandria Szeglet was sent home from school last week for wearing a green strip of tape with the word “Choice” on her uniform. That day, the school was holding a pro-life event where some students wore red pieces of tape with the word “Life” written on them. As Szeglet began handing out her green strips to fellow students, she was told to remove the tape or go home. Smartly, she chose the latter.
Still, other students carried on the message, and according to reports, as many as 100 students were sent home. John de Faveri, Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board director disputed those numbers, while still adding, “On the issue, pro-life is part of the Catholic stand. The pro-choice students were not appropriate in the context of a Catholic school.”
As the news of the incident spread, the school board’s position seemed to shift.
“It wasn’t anything about what the students were trying to say; it was the inappropriate way they went about it,” de Faveri told the Globe and Mail. “They didn’t get approval from the school. They didn’t do anything of the sort.”
Pardon my lack of faith, but when the issue of gay-straight alliances came to the Halton Catholic board, chair Alice Anne LeMay said that students would be denied a request for a GSA even if they sought approval from the school. “It’s not in accordance with the teachings of the church,” she said.
Similarly, I’m skeptical that Szeglet and her friends would have been permitted to express their pro-choice positions, even if they had asked permission from the school beforehand. Let’s not kid ourselves; the issue is not that these students defiantly defaced their uniforms with strips of illicit green material without permission, it’s that they expressed a position fundamentally opposed to the teachings of the church.
The bitsy snag is here is that St. Patrick is a public school, funded by public dollars. Yet somehow, administrators feel compelled to stifle free expression. I don’t think I need to explain the dissonance here.
It’s bad enough that taxpayers in Ontario are footing the bill for only one type of religious education (when really, they should be funding none), but it becomes intolerable when that education is restrictive and exclusionary. Disallowing students to form positive alliances or express their opinions openly exemplifies just that. At an age where students should be encouraged to think critically, schools shouldn’t be the ones to shut down the debate.
Playing favourites with ideology
Carleton student union upholds decision to ban anti-abortion group
The Carleton University Students Association (CUSA) has decided to uphold its judgment that Carleton Lifeline, an anti-abortion club on campus, is unworthy of group status.
CUSA threatened to strip the group of its status back in November, alleging that the club violated CUSA’s anti-discrimination policy. The policy states that “any campaign, distribution, solicitation, lobbying, effort, display, event etc. that seeks to limit or remove a woman’s right to choose her options in the case of pregnancy will not be supported.”
When the decision was being weighed, I argued that CUSA’s ban would amount to little more than discrimination based on religious and political belief. Yes, I used the “D” word. Here’s another word: humiliation. CUSA is no stranger to that one; it got plenty of it in 2008 after deciding to discontinue its Shinerama fundraiser for cystic fibrosis. Why? Well, members looked in their belly buttons and somehow landed upon the erroneous conclusion that the disease only affected “white people, and primarily men.” That little blunder cost CUSA some of its pride, and this one should too.
CUSA’s own constitution states its aim to uphold an “environment free from prejudice, exploitation, abuse or violence on the basis of, but not limited to, sex, race, language, religion, age, national or social status, political affiliation or belief, sexual orientation or marital status.” Indeed, on paper CUSA purports to defend a campus environment where prejudice based on political affiliation or belief is not tolerated. However, in practice, CUSA not only yields to such intolerance, but acts as perpetrator by denying club status based on the beliefs of its members. Ironic? (That creaking sound you hear is the collective twinge of CUSA’s decision-makers cocking their heads.)
Carleton Lifeline has been criticized for its methods—particularly its graphic displays and comparisons of abortion to Holocaust. I happen to agree with many of those criticisms. I really don’t see the need to invoke Hitler in the discussion of terminated pregnancies, especially when doing so is a pretty sure-fire way to shoot one’s self in the foot. But CUSA should not be the one to take away the gun. Pro-choice positions were once in the spot pro-life positions find themselves on campuses today; that is, in the minority. Imagine we forced those students silent for fear they would infringe on the rights of the religious majority? (Actually, that was often the case.) While Carleton Lifeline is not being silenced today, it is effectively being sent the same message by being denied club status.
The union needs to stand by its principle of defending the rights of all students, regardless of ideology. Or else, it should stand by none at all. While Carleton Lifeline’s message might make us feel a little uneasy, it does not infringe on a woman’s right to choose. CUSA should be ashamed of its blatant ideological favouritism, and lambasted for its discriminatory action towards its own students on campus.
Money, not free speech, at issue in Carleton pro-life dispute
Carleton students shouldn’t be forced to pay for a group they don’t support
Critics of the Carleton University Students’ Association’s threat to strip an anti-abortion group’s club status are missing the point.
“Carleton student association bans anti-abortion club,” screams the headline on the National Post’s religion blog. According to a press release from the Campaign Life Coalition: “Carleton University, that bastion of free-thought, has ordered some of its students to accept its pro-abortion policy or leave the University.”
The problem is that this just simply isn’t true.
What’s actually happening at Carleton is that the students’ association–not the university–has decided to suspend a group’s club status. What does this actually mean? It means the group won’t get student money and can’t use student space for their activities. That’s it.
This has nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with a group of self-righteous whiners who feel that they’re entitled to funding from all students and are upset that the gravy train has been stopped.
This group hasn’t been “silenced” or any such nonsense, they’re just being forced to pay their own way.
Students shouldn’t be forced to financially support groups that they disagree with. As Thomas Jefferson said, “to compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
Yes, I am aware that students across the country are forced to pay for on-campus groups they may or may not support. I don’t think they should be.
Moreover, Carleton Lifeline’s views are particularly extreme. The group’s most recent protest involved the hosting of something called the “Genocide Awareness Project” a vile campaign which makes a mockery of the suffering of Holocaust victims.
The CUSA is a private corporation run by elected pseudo-politicians, they’re allowed to take stances on issues. One might even say that’s what they’re supposed to do.
If individual Carleton students want to pay for this group they can, and should, do it out of their own pockets.
Hey valedictorian, watch the soapbox
UWinnipeg valedictorian should have left her protest against an honourary degree for Vic Toews outside
The convocation ceremony at the University of Winnipeg this past Sunday became more than just an educational rite of passage when valedictorian Erin Larson took to the podium. “While I’m immensely proud to be an alumnus of the University of Winnipeg and extremely honoured to have been selected valedictorian,” Larson began, “I have to admit I’m not proud to share the stage with everyone who is on it today.”
Behind Larson sat Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who was being awarded an honourary degree by the University of Winnipeg. Toews, who is staunchly opposed to gay marriage, abortion, and other positions sure to reckon him unpopular at a university, stared at his program while Larson continued her valedictorian address.
“I feel the University of Winnipeg has recently suffered a profound loss of integrity due to the actions of the administration,” Lawson continued. “The decision to give an honorary law degree to someone who is best known to my generation of students as being a vocal opponent of expanding human rights is questionable at best.”
The decision was indeed a dubious one for the liberally-reputed University of Winnipeg. Some students, in fact, chose to forgo their walk across the stage in favour of a protest outside the university, where about 40 people gathered holding placards condemning the university’s bestowment of the honorary doctor of laws degree on Toews. It was inside, however, in front of hundreds of alumni, students, family and friends, where Larson chose to make her beliefs known.
She had every right to do so, of course. As valedictorian, those few minutes were her own, to do with whatever she pleased. Though just because we have the right, say, to wave an aluminum rod around amid a lightning storm, it doesn’t mean the idea is suddenly a good one. Larson began her speech commenting on her desire to properly reflect the sentiments of the graduating body, yet continued by expressing her own profound disappointment with the university’s honourary degree decision. Was she speaking on behalf of the student body? Or momentarily abandoning her pledge to do so?
In any case, a valedictory address should not be a political soapbox. While it could be said that granting an honourary degree to a cabinet minister is a political statement in itself, the valedictorian’s speech is not the time to initiate forthright political debate, particularly in front of friends and family who have come to watch their graduate cross the stage.
Larson’s approach simply comes off as crass. She could have joined the group of protestors outside the convocation, or declined her role as valedictorian, a move that would have sent the same point without hijacking the event to tout her ideological message. While holding your breath and plugging your ears is sometimes championed as valiant political activism amid the cozy walls of the university campus, the real world expects some tact when trying to make a political statement. (Well, except in the House of Commons.)
Larson made a point of mentioning the university’s mission statement while drilling home her position, reading that it strives to “Offer a community which appreciates, fosters and promotes values of human dignity, equality, nondiscrimination and appreciation of diversity.” Yet Larson, trying to emphasize that the university has forfeited its integrity by bestowing an honour on a man who doesn’t represent its mission statement, inadvertently forfeits her own by resorting to a tactless, ill-timed public statement. Whether or not you agree with Toews politically, subjecting him to public humiliation certainly does not further any efforts to promote “human dignity.” Though compassion and tolerance for ideological diversity–maybe that’s something one picks up in post-grad.
UVic student union gives in to pro-life club
Youth Protecting Youth to be reimbursed for withheld funding going back two years
A lawsuit launched by a University of Victoria pro-life club against the student society has been settled out of court. Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) has had its status as a student group fully restored, and the University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) has agreed to reimburse the group for the funding that has been withheld for two years.
The spat began in October 2008 when the UVSS refused to give YPY the same meagre funding all UVic student clubs receive. Clubs approved by a committee are entitled to $232 each year and such perks as banner supplies and free room bookings. Upon review in 2009, the committee approved YPY. But the students’ society board stepped in and once again revoked the funding. In a meeting, last fall the society’s directors accused YPY of “harassing” female students (although they mentioned no specifics). Although its funding had been withdrawn, it wasn’t until February of this year, that YPY had its status as an official student group revoked.
In May, YPY filed a petition with B.C. Supreme Court seeking restitution for denied funding, reinstatement as a student group, and a removal of policies that defined pro-life advocacy as harassment. In June, the group noted on its website that the student society had agreed to most of its terms, but that YPY was seeking assurances that its status as a legitimate student group, entitled to the funding guaranteed to all other campus clubs would not be threatened again. Towards this end, the UVSS has agreed to allow the lawsuit to stand in abeyance, meaning it can be reactivated at any point in the future if the pro-life club again comes under threat.
YPY received legal counseling and representation from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.
With files from Erin Millar
UCalgary pro-life group reinstated
Campus Pro Life still in dispute over trespassing notice
A University of Calgary pro-life group that displays images of aborted fetuses and compares abortion to the Holocaust will retain its official student group status. The student union had revoked the group’s standing, but a review board has overturned that decision.
The group, Campus Pro Life Club is still in a dispute with the university administration over a trespassing notice. Since 2006, the group has been accused of trespassing at least four times for failing to comply with an order to turn their controversial images inward. One of those cases resulted in legal action, but the Crown stayed charges against six group members in November due to lack of evidence. However, in May, U of C officials found 10 Campus Pro Life members guilty under non-academic conduct provisions, over the failure to turn their signs inward. The Group is currently appealing the decision, and is being represented in the process by the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
The group has pledged to continue with its Genocide Awareness Project. “We’re planning to continue as normally as we have in the past couple of years with various activities, and we’ll put the Genocide Awareness Project in the fall,” group president Alanna Campbell told Canwest. Another member, Peter Csillag indicated that Campus Pro Life, in its bid to overturn the university`s decision to find it guilty of misconduct, is prepared to challenge the U of C in court. “We’ll fight this internally and if we need to — to the Court of Queen’s Bench it goes,” he said.
The university has not yet agreed to consider an appeal. “A review board is going to meet at a later date to see if there is grounds for an appeal,” spokesman Grady Semmens said.
-Photo by January152010
Pro-lifers sue UVic student union
Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) seek apology, reversal of student union policy, and financial restitution
You don’t need to be a great social commentator to recognize that when you mix abortion debates with university students, you get a political hot potato. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Victoriaville or Vancouver though, because the script pretty much stays the same.
Step 1: A pro-life student club (or traveling exhibition) compares abortion in some way to murder/genocide/terrible, terrible things
Step 2: The university’s student council, in all its wisdom, decides to ban said group or club from campus.
Step 3: Gnashing of teeth commences.
It happened at UBC-Okanagan, it happened at York, it happened at Lakehead . . . it happens pretty much everywhere. Generally though, the debate stays inside the university. In the case of the University of Victoria, it’s headed to the courtroom.
Youth Protecting Youth (YPY), the pro-choice student club at UVic, has initiated legal action against the UVic Student Society (UVSS) for what they claim is “a protracted campaign of censorship and discrimination against the club, in which the Student Society has deprived YPY of official club status and withdrawn its funding to punish it for expressing pro-life views.” The BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) has been assisting YPY over the past year, and is seeking intervener status in the lawsuit.
Somewhat ironically, the lawsuit comes after the UVSS restored YPY’s club status. This followed two years of increasing clampdowns on the club, which culminated in the UVSS denying YPY club status in February. Since that time, UVSS elections were held, in which the left-leaning slate that had been in power for over a decade was defeated by a more centrist group, which reinstated the club last month.
It’s a moot point to YPY though. In the lawsuit, they demand what amounts to a formal apology from the UVSS, a guarantee that club status will not be taken away in the future, and financial restitution for funds refused since October 2008.
Case law on the subject is murky. In 2008, BC’s human rights tribunal dismissed a complaint by UBC-Okanagan’s pro-choice student club, Students For Life, allowing the student union to continue to deny them club status. However, at the time William Black, a law professor at UBC, said the case probably wasn’t precedent setting, arguing “It looks like it was rejected not as a matter of principle, but based on the facts.” At UBC-O, a special general meeting was held to ban Students For Life. At UVic, all decisions involving YPY have been made exclusively by the UVSS council. In America however, the Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that student clubs cannot be denied funding based on their viewpoint.
Where the lawsuit goes from now is anyone’s guess, though in all likelihood will cost thousands of dollars, take months to finish, and remind the majority of students why wading into the waters of the abortion debate is an issue student governments should be wary of.
UVic student union revokes club status of pro-life club
Latest move to silence abortion debate at UVic will likely lead to legal showdown
The University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) cranked up their fight against the pro-life student club Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) last week by revoking the club’s status. Previous efforts to silence the club’s controversial message only went so far as to deny the club funding. This latest move denies the very existence of the group, upping the stakes significantly in a conflict that is sure to end up in court.
The spat began in October 2008 when the university’s students’ society refused to give YPY the same meagre funding all UVic student clubs receive. Clubs approved by a committee are entitled to $232 each year in addition to such perks as banner supplies and free room bookings. Upon review in 2009, the committee approved funding for YPY. But the students’ society board stepped in and once again revoked the funding, yet still permitted it to operate on campus.
In an October 2009 meeting, the society’s directors accused YPY of “harassing” female students with anti-abortion posters. Those opposed to YPY have also complained about a YPY sponsored event that featured the controversial pro-life activist Stephanie Gray debate distinguished medical ethicist Eike-Henner Kluge. Director Tracey Ho summed up the society’s position by saying, “No one should debate my rights over my own body.”
YPY fought back by contacting the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), in hopes the organization would defend its right to freedom of speech. BCCLA agreed and in late 2009 threatened to launch a lawsuit on behalf of YPY if the UVSS didn’t reinstate the club’s funding. The UVSS brushed the BCCLA off. (Read our previous coverage here.)
In a UVSS meeting that stretched past 11pm last Monday night, the student society decided to revoke the club’s status for one year, meaning that in addition to losing funding, YPY can no longer rent rooms or access other perks available to clubs. YPY may be able to regain status if it complies to certain restrictions. The catch is that the UVSS hasn’t yet determined what those restriction are, so YPY’s status won’t change until the restrictions are written at some unspecified time in the future.
The decision was in part a response to a complaint filed by the UVSS Women’s Centre. “Reproductive rights are elemental in women’s collective and individual potential for equity in all realms of social life,” the complaint letter states. “Access to abortion free from harassment is one of these reproductive rights that YPY continually undermine through the proliferation of inaccurate information and the creation of hostile environments.”
“YPY’s identity and actions as a pro-life organization inherently discriminates against women. Through intimidation tactics and moralist evangelizing, YPY limits the ability of women on campus to access accurate information about abortion free from harassment.”
John Dixon, president of BCCLA, finds this argument illogical. “It is worthwhile to consider, for a moment, what this really means,” he wrote in an email. “It means that the very civil, moderate pro-life YPY club at UVic doesn’t even have to get out of bed in the morning to discriminate against women; it means that no matter how mild, moderate, and circumscribed its advocacy, it discriminates against women. There is no appeal to reason here, but a weird evocation of a kind of secular flavour of sacrilege.”
In a Thursday email to UVSS chairperson Veronica Harrison, YPY president Anastasia Pearse asked the UVSS to call a special general meeting to reconsider their status. “We are unaware of any policy or bylaw that gives the Board discretion to withhold club status indefinitely based upon a yet-to-be-developed policy,” Pearse wrote. “We refuse to participate.”
Harrison has maintained that the UVSS has every right to deny funding to YPY. “Freedom of speech of course can happen, but not when it’s harassing or oppressing other people,” she said in December.
UVSS Director Nathan Warner was one of the minority who voted against revoking YPY’s status. “I’m pro-choice but I’m also pro-debate,” he told Maclean’s. “Abortion is not an easy topic for anyone and I believe that no matter what you ask it will likely offend someone. I don’t think that is reason enough to merit banning a club from campus.”
Warner concedes that YPY is asking tough questions in its anti-abortion campaign. But, as he points out, YPY’s posters don’t include graphic images that have been associated with other pro-life campus activism. “This attack on freedom of expression is unfounded and needs to be stopped,” he said.
It seems unlikely that the BCCLA will back off either. According to Dixon: “At the University of Victoria, the values of freedom of conscience, opinion, religion, and expression are decried as quaint residues of an irrelevant past. The Board of the Student Society has drunk deeply at the well of post-modernist ideology, and they are determined to drive the very moderate and civil student pro-life club from the campus. What certainly seems separate from this university is the faintest memory of the very idea of a ‘university’ as a place dedicated to the preference of dialogue over force.”
Related: Closed for debate. Also see, Uvic’s pro-choicers up the ante against pro-life club
- With files from David Foster
UVic’s pro-choicers up the ante against pro-life club
Latest petition goes so far as to question existence of pro-life club Youth Protecting Youth
David J. A. Foster, a student blogger at the University of Victoria, reports that he has come across a petition calling for the indefinite suspension of the pro-life club Youth Protecting Youth. The petition, which was found in UVic’s students union building, goes farther than previous efforts by the University of Victoria Students’ Society to limit the club’s activities.
For nearly a year and a half, Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) and the University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) have locked horns. Since October 2008, the UVSS has denied $232 in annual funding to which all clubs are entitled to. In October 2009 the UVSS board again voted to deny funding. Recently, the BC Civil Liberties Association asked the UVSS board to reconsider their position, arguing that denying funding is an unreasonable limit to freedom of speech on a university campus that should be a bastion of open debate. The board refused and BCCLA is threatening legal action. The Canadian Federation of Students has reportedly stepped up to offer the UVSS legal funding if the BCCLA makes good on its threat.
However, while UVSS has repeatedly refused to fund the anti-abortion club, it has not outright denied its status as a club. This gives the group the right to book space and other perks. This latest petition brings the controversy a step further by asking that the club be denied status full stop.
The petition asks the UVSS clubs council to consider a motion calling for the suspension of the group for “their repeated offensive actions.” These offensive actions, as described in a letter preceding the petition, include: use of GAP (Genocide Awareness Project) materials on campus and hosting the controversial anti-abortion activist Stephanie Gray on campus, who participated in a debate with a philosophy professor. “This is hate speech that caused harm to many people on campus, including but not limited to many women on campus who have had abortions,” the letter reads. “The images and the captions on the posters harassed women and tried to make us feel guilty about a choice that we have a right to make.”
First thing first, according to everyone I’ve spoken to about the topic, GAP materials–which typically feature graphic images of abortions next to those of horrific events like the Rwandan Genocide–have never been used on UVic campus. Ever. Not by Stephanie Gray or anyone. So what this boils down to is a group of students feeling offended by the posters and Stephanie Gray.
I wrote an article on the BCCLA’s legal action against the UVSS in December, which included a description of the event at which Gray spoke. You can read it here.
And as far as I can tell, this dispute is going to go as far as the courts allow. John Dixon of the BCCLA is candid about his organization’s determination to fight for YPY’s freedom of speech and I can’t think of a more aggressive sparring partner than a stubborn students’ association funded by the CFS.
UCalgary kicked off my list of potential grad schools
University charges students with trespassing after graphic abortion display
The University of Calgary has taken the war against politically incorrect opinions on university campuses to a whole new level.
The University is in the process of charging students with trepassing after the student set up a outdoor display containing graphic images of aborted fetuses.
The group Campus Pro-Life put up a display of the Genocide Awareness Project in a central area of the campus back in November. They did so despite being told by university administration they were not welcome to set-up the display in such a way that unsuspecting passers-by would be exposed to the images. The university also warned the students that legal consequences could follow if they defied the order. Regardless, the students set up their display with the pictures clearly visible to onlookers.
I not a supporter of the display and, frankly, find the equating of abortion to the Holocaust offensive. However, the university administration has a responsibility to tolerate student expression of such opinions. The fact that the university is seeking court convictions of these students shows a willingness to crush unpopular student expression that is unbecoming of an institution dedicated to the ideas of the academy.
The University of Calgary has been steadly climbing in reputation in the last couple of years and has done a wonderful job in creating good graduate programs that are nationally competitive. It was one of the universities I was considering if I decided to continue in political science for graduate studies. An institution that does not cherish free expression, especially when that expression is difficult to tolerate, is an institution that ultimately limits intellectual pursuits. Why would I attend an institution that limits debate?
I’m not disputing that the university has a right to ask Campus Pro-Life to display their pictures in a less intrusive way; that is an expression of an idea. However, it should not be able to use the coercive power of the state against a way of expressing an idea. The university says it doesn’t mind the expression of the idea on the campus, only the method of expression.
Universities shouldn’t allow one method of expression for ideas it agrees with and then deny that same method of expression to an idea it disapproves of.
UCalgary anti-abortion protesters charged with trespassing
Group defied university request to turn graphic images inwards; three charged
The CBC is reporting that several students who took part in a graphic anti-abortion display at the University of Calgary have been charged with trespassing.
According to the students’ lawyer, members of the University of Calgary Campus Pro-Life group have to enter a plea by the end of the month and can expect a trial later in 2009.
“The university is created by legislation, governed by legislation and receives more than 60 per cent of its funding from taxpayers,” said Canadian Constitution Foundation executive director John Carpay in a press release. “As a public institution, it does not have the right to discriminate against one group of students by censoring one viewpoint on an issue.”
President of the anti-abortion group Leah Hallman says three students have been served legal papers, and she expects three more will be served.
According to the Calgary Herald, the pro-life group and university administrators have been locked in an ongoing battle over the group’s Genocide Awareness Project display, which juxtaposes images of dead fetuses with Holocaust or Rwandan genocide victims.
On Nov. 26, after being asked by the university to turn the graphic images inwards to protect those who didn’t want to see them, the group erected their display with the posters facing outwards.
In a letter to the students before the rally, the university warned that they would consider the students to be trespassing and that they would be subject to arrest, fines, suspension or expulsion if their protest went ahead as planned.
The university also put up signs warning students and staff about the “extremely graphic” poster display.
Hallman says they were aware of the possibility of legal action after they went against the university’s warning, but that the decision to charge members of their group is both surprising and disappointing.
Denying anti-abortionists club status hurts free speech?
Liberties groups says issues around abortion need further debate, not censorship
The Globe and Mail is reporting that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has weighed in on the controversial debate surrounding the rights of anti-abortion clubs on university campuses.
In a letter, sent last week to the Canadian Federation of Students, the CCLA says denying campus-club status to anti-abortion groups infringes on freedom of speech and is objecting to a resolution supporting student unions that deny the groups funding and office space.
“We decided to weigh in on this, a rather disquieting development in the university environment, which is supposed to encourage debate,” says CCLA general counsel Alan Borovoy.
In their letter, the CCLA asks: “What is there about these anti-abortion groups that warrant such special denigration?” saying that the issue needs further debate, not censorship.
In the Globe, CFS spokesman Joel Duff says the resolution, which was adopted by federation delegates a year ago, lends “moral support” to student unions who are opposed to funding anti-abortion groups. He also points out that the student unions’ opposition to financing was upheld last fall by the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
We might just all be KKK members
Some student leaders have compared supporting anti-abortion student clubs to supporting white supremacists. Really?
Last month, the Ontario branch of the Canadian Federation of Students voted to sanction the denial of student space to anti-abortion (pro-life, anti-choice, or whatever) groups. The motion reads that “member (unions) that refuse to allow anti-choice organizations access to their resources and space be supported.”
Though this particular motion grew out of a controversy sparked by the Lakehead University Students’ Union denial of student space to a pro-life group, such controversies have sprung up across the country, and the banning of anti-abortion groups is not exclusive to CFS schools.
I will not go into this history today (though I may at some future point) except to say that this is nothing short of an attack on the university as a place for the free exchange of ideas. Even Heather Kere, a Ryerson Students’ Union executive who hasn’t exactly distinguished herself as a moderate, tried to amend the CFS motion so that it would only apply to anti-abortion groups that harassed students. An even-handed and grounded amendment that was promptly rejected.
And why did they reject it? Well, Shelley Melanson, CFS national women’s representative, told the Eyeopener, “You wouldn’t take public money to put in an organization that moves to take away people’s rights; you wouldn’t fund the KKK.”
Similarly, Sandy Hudson, CFS-Ontario women’s rep, also thinks anti-abortion groups are comparable to fascists. As the University of Western Ontario Gazette reported: “When asked whether Ryerson students should be exposed to both sides of the abortion issue, Hudson said allowing an anti-choice group would be like allowing a white supremacist group on campus.”
There you have it: if you do not agree with the CFS position on abortion you are no better than a member of the Klu Klux Klan or a white supremacist.
Apart from the sheer intellectual laziness of dismissing opponents as hate-mongering, totalitarian buffoons, the CFS just might be revealing its own intolerant tendencies. Let’s see who else might qualify as a white supremacist because of their position on abortion? Well Catholics come to mind. So do Hindus. And religious Jews and Muslims. (Full disclosure: I am a lapsed Catholic.)
Certainly Melanson and Hudson, speaking on behalf of the CFS, do not mean to equate religious groups, including minority religious groups, with the KKK and white supremacists (or maybe they do; I’m not a mind reader). But it is hard not to come to the conclusion that Melanson and Hudson envision kooks like James Keestra, Ernst Zundel, and David Andrews at the next meeting of the Interfaith Coalition.
What about the population in general? According to a 2006 Environics poll, 31 per cent of Canadians believe that the law should protect life “at conception.” Are nearly one-third of Canadians comparable to KKK members too?
Another third of Canadians believe the law should intervene at “some time during pregnancy,” meaning that after a certain gestation period abortion should be prohibited. This is also the position of many doctors. The Canadian Medical Association defines abortion as “the active termination of a pregnancy before fetal viability” (emphasis mine). The CMA does, however, recognize that late term abortions may be performed “under exceptional circumstances.”
Unless you’ve been living in some nether world for the past 20 years, you’ll know that Canada is the only country in the Western world to offer no legal regulation on abortive practices whatsoever. This, of course, includes those Scandinavian countries that the Canadian left has developed such a fetish for.
While the Supreme Court ruled the pre-existing law that criminalized abortion unconstitutional except under very narrow circumstances, it did not rule that no law could be permitted. In fact, the Court commented that a regulatory law might just be a good idea. Writing for the majority in the 1988 Morgentaler case, Justice Bertha Wilson wrote, “The value to be placed on the fetus as potential life is directly related to the stage of its development during gestation . . . The precise point in the development of the fetus at which the state’s interest in its protection becomes ‘compelling’ should be left to the informed judgment of the legislature.” Such a law was passed by the Mulroney government, but died on the Senate floor.
So do the CFS’s principal spokespeople on women’s issues only equate those who want absolute restriction on abortion with white supremacists? Or does the characterization extend to those who would regulate it? Would banning student groups that promote the position that the law should step in to prevent second and third trimester abortions also be sanctioned by the CFS? Clarification on just who is and who isn’t no better than a white supremacist is in order, I think.
The question of “how late is too late?” is a divisive and uncomfortable one among abortion rights activists. As National Post columnist Jonathan Kay put it late last month in reference to a symposium at the University of Toronto to mark the 20th anniversary of the Morgentaler ruling:
“Within their own minds, [abortion activists] do wrestle with these important moral questions — as any intelligent person must. But when in public, they censor themselves. Locked in what they feel to be a tribal culture war against pro-lifers, the pro-choice camp allows itself no nuance. This is essentially the reason Canada has no abortion law: Any stirring of legislative action arouses such tribal war fury among pro-choicers as to send politicians scurrying.”
The abortion issue is clearly not settled in the minds of Canadians, but thankfully we have student leaders to sort it out for us, and representatives of the CFS to deem that the third of us, and perhaps the two-thirds of us, that disagree with them are analogous to procurers of hate propaganda.
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In any event, if you are a student, particularly one at an Ontario university, who disagrees with the CFS Ontario position on abortion, you should ask your local representative if that means you are no better than a white supremacist or a member of the Klu Klux Klan.
Better yet, contact the sources directly:
Shelly Melanson, email: pres@cusaonline.com phone: 613.520.2600 ext.1603
Sandy Hudson, email: vpequity@utsu.ca phone: 416-978-4911 ext. 237
