When Being Pro-Choice Means Never Choosing Life

All too often today, diversity and choice at colleges and universities is encouraged unless the diverse choice made is by a pro-life advocate against abortion.

And if you thought sending your student to a Canadian university might improve the intellectual climate, you might be wrong. At the University of Calgary several tuition-paying students have been charged with criminal trespass for participating in a pro-life display that in previous years was permitted by university officials. In a post entitled, "Drinking intellectual hemlock at the University of Calgary," a trio of students reports.

Alas, universities easily defend free inquiry in the abstract but are less robust when served up with opinions that stubbornly refuse to bow to the preferred dictates of ever anxious administrators. We refer specifically to the Uof C's attempt to silence its student pro-life club, members of whom were served trespassing notices earlier this month. The charges stem from a graphic --indeed gross--exhibit about abortion the students set up in November. The students will appear in provincial court today to answer the charges.

Whatever one thinks of abortion, the University's crackdown on student pro-lifers has never been about abortion. It is not even about ugly pictures. The real issue here concerns the free expression and inquiry at the heart of university life. [SNIP]

However, had students displayed photos of victims of the wars in Sudan, Afghanistan, or Iraq, or of military torture at Abu Ghraib, they would never be the subject of trespassing charges. [SNIP]

The university's behaviour in this matter has been excessive. At a meeting last October between the university and the pro-life students who have been consistently peaceful, the university brought along seven police officers. Why? Similarly, the university asked Calgary's finest to be on campus while students erected their pro-life display last November.

What begins as political correctness all too often morphs into censorship, and is part and parcel of how the progressive movement subverts a free society.