Banning the Politically Incorrect

It’s been a while since I’ve cared about student politics, but this article is instructive. The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) of Ontario, the umbrella group for university student federations here, has approved a motion to support student unions that wish to ban pro-life groups from their campuses. This comes after a year of decisions by student unions at universities across the country banning or severely restricting pro-life groups.

Now you can be forgiven if you thought that university campuses were a place for free inquiry and rigorous debate about the more contentious moral and political issues of our day. An explanation comes courtesy of Sandy Hudson, CFS-Ontario’s “woman commissioner”:

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.

Then there’s the always cheerful Joyce Arthur, president of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, who pushes the ante even higher:

Arthur believes pro-life groups should not receive support from student unions because they seek to repress human rights. She said these groups are comparable to Neo-Nazi movements.

Right… Hasn’t anybody told Arthur that calling your opponent a Nazi in lieu of argument is so cliché? Anyway, I really have to wonder what’s behind all this demonization and ostracism. The pro-life movement is frankly a negligible force in Canadian politics. Pro-life groups on university campuses tend to be small and relatively inoffensive, populated by mild-mannered and socially awkward undergraduates. Why do abortion choice advocates feel so threatened?

As a side note, the most recent polling (from 2006) indicates that Canadians are pretty divided over the abortion issue. About a third think that legal protection for human life should begin at conception; another third think that it should begin sometime during pregnancy; and the remaining 30% say that it should begin at birth. Of those who think that protection should begin at some point during pregnancy, about 70% say it should be at the beginning of the second trimester, while 30% think it should be at the beginning of the third trimester.

So two-thirds of Canadians think there should be some legal protection for the unborn. Currently there is none. Is this an issue that, maybe, we should be having some sort of debate about?