Newsletter

April 2008

Our Student Leaders Are Hardly Totalitarian

When the executive members of the York University Student Centre decided not to
allow student space to be used as a platform to advocate criminalizing women, we
were aware that there would be objections.

We
were also aware that anti-choice campaigners would attempt to cloak themselves
as defenders of “free speech” to avoid admitting that they do not think women
should have the right to choose what they do with their own bodies. We were not
aware that a traditionally reputable publication like the Citizenwould
stoop to demonizing students’ representatives by calling us “totalitarians.”

The
anti-choice campaign event was proposed by representatives of the Canadian
Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, a group whose mission is to “make abortion
unthinkable.” This group has harassed students on a number of Ontario university
campuses with graphic images and materials that compare abortion to the
Holocaust as part of a campaign that it calls the “Genocide Awareness Project.”

These anti-choice campaigners propose that women in Canada should not be able to
access the medical procedure of abortion without being prosecuted.

Most York University students recognize that every woman has the right to
choose. They also understand that moral considerations about abortion are a very
personal matter.

The
York University Student Centre executive committee is committed to the right of
all persons to the freedom of expression that is guaranteed by the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.

However, all persons are also entitled to function in an environment free of
harassment and intimidation tactics that anti-choice campaigners continue to
employ. Since the Student Centre is accountable to students, not York University
administrators, not conservative pundits and certainly not anti-choice
campaigners from an organization external to the York University community, it
was decided that no student resources (i.e. the free use of the Student Centre
space) would be allocated to support an anti-choice campaign of intimidation and
harassment.

York University can make its own decisions and, if the York University president
wishes to host a debate organized by these anti-choice campaigners, the
university will have to take responsibility for that.

Kelly Holloway, Vice-chair, York University Student Centre, Toronto.
Ottawa Citizen, March 17, 2008.