By Steve Weatherbe

LAST FALL, disagreement over abortion flared up anew at the University of Victoria (UVic).

Students for Choice (SFC), the campus pro-abortion club, boycotted a debate staged by the pro-life Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) club, instead distributing to the event’s 400-plus attendees a pamphlet titled ‘Five Reasons Why Pro-Choice Does Not Debate Anti-Choice.’

Times have changed – and quickly.

On February 6, SFC, with an assist from the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), debated YPY – which was ably seconded by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA).

“We’re pro-choice,” BCCLA’s John Dixon told the debate audience of 150, adding: “But we’re also against censorship.”

And the BCCLA believes the UVic Students’ Society (UVSS), at the urging of SFC, has been throttling the pro-life club’s free speech for the past two years, by withholding the funding that all other clubs receive. The UVSS is now considering suspending YPY for a year.

Winning abortion on demand in Canada took “a very long fight,” Dixon said – and emphasized that it could not have been achieved without freedom of speech.

BCCLA supports YPY in this situation because, he maintained, pro-choice forces –  including a majority on the UVSS board – have denied YPY’s freedom of speech and expression many times over.

“The reason why . . . the student society are moving to deny [YPY] funding and status is to  punish them for their speech. They are being disciplined,” said Dixon.

At first, the pro-abortion camp said free speech wasn’t involved – but that if it were, it didn’t apply on campus anyway.

Lately, however, the tune has changed. “Everyone is for freedom of speech,” SFC member Tara Patterson declared at a recent hearing to suspend YPY. However, a subsequent Marxist critic of YPY insisted that freedom of speech was just another tool of oppression.

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Yes to free speech, went the pro-abortion argument – but only for those who deserve it.

In pro-choice eyes, YPY is disqualified for two reasons: its posters; and the presentations of Stephanie Gray, head of the Calgary-based Centre for Bioethical Reform.

The posters intimidate women by comparing abortion to the death penalty, contended SFC debater Dana Wenz.

“They are saying that having an abortion is the same as administering the death penalty – even in the extreme circumstances, such as conception during rape or incest.”

Gray’s appearance in last fall’s debate raised red flags for the pro-choice camp.

The activist helps local campus pro-lifers mount The Genocide Awareness Project, a montage of photos likening abortion to the Nazi Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the American lynching of blacks by white racists.

“Would we invite an individual from any other organization that was this racist, this sexist, this misogynistic, this anti-Semitic? Absolutely not!” declared Patterson.

While SCS argues it is anti-Semitic to compare the Nazi genocide to anything, one of its ‘Five Reasons’ is that it considers the pro-life movement genocidal.

Defending YPY’s right to offend people was club president Anastasia Pearse. “Our posters are offensive to some people. If you eat meat and see a poster saying eating meat is bad, that might offend you.” Indeed, the campus Vegan Club compares meat eating to genocide, and its president challenged Students for Choice to go after Vegan funding too.

ARCC’s Joyce Arthur, a longtime pro-choice activist, spent much of her debate time attacking the BCCLA for having defended pro-life speech rights on other occasions.

Dixon’s magisterial calm probably carried the day with neutral audience members. Free speech was essential to democracy, he urged, and democracy “is the greatest spiritual idea to come roaring down the pike since monotheism . . . That we should have to argue about [free speech] in a democracy is one bad thing – but that we should have to do it on a university campus . . . is a kind of disgrace.”

March 2010