Anti-abortion students force us to look at our commitment to free speech
Nov 21, 2010 – 8:41 PM ET | Last Updated: Nov 22, 2010 7:27 AM ET
This week the National Post reported twice on the decision at Carleton University to ban Carleton Lifeline, an anti-abortion group. We also ran an editorial about the issue noting the unfairness of the decision.
The Carleton University Students Association (CUSA), not the university administration, decertified the group. I tried to speak to someone from CUSA to try to understand how the organization justified the banning of free speech. There was no response to any of my many phone calls and emails.
However, from their letters to Carleton Lifeline, CUSA has stated it has an anti-discrimination policy that upholds a woman's right to choose. From that they seem to have decided that anyone who opposes abortion, presumably one of the two choices of someone who believes in "choice," holds a discriminatory view that violates the policy and therefore cannot be a campus club.
The refusal by the students to respond to the request for an interview leaves us with no official explanation for the action.
But how can a group shut down free speech and get away with it without explanation?
Carleton University's administration told me in an email that CUSA is independent and therefore it could do nothing. The administration did not mention in the letter that all students pay dues to CUSA, and that those dues are collected by the university.
It should be noted that in October Carleton University had five students from Carleton Lifeline arrested by Ottawa police for attempting to put up graphic anti-abortion posters.
As of this writing, the Carleton story has not been covered at all by two of the country's largest newspapers, the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. My guess is that this small group of anti-abortion activists are largely viewed as kooks or outliers for their views and therefore not worthy of coverage.
But the fact that these young men and women are anti-abortion should have nothing to do with whether they are worthy of coverage. This is about certain students, CUSA, acting like petty tyrants because they do not like the views of some of their fellow students. This goes against every principle of free speech.
Why is there not more outrage about this?
I should note that recently the Globe did tackle the free speech issue in a feature story about the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the obscenity trial over Lady Chatterley's Lover.
"Fifty years ago this week, on Nov. 2, 1960, a jury of nine men and three women in Court No. 1 of London's Old Bailey found Penguin Books not guilty of publishing obscenity. The book was D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover," wrote Ian Brown.
"The trial of Constance Chatterley is still considered the most significant obscenity contest in English literary history. For six days in court, the soldiers of moralism — those who believed some people had a right to tell others what they could read and how to behave — battled a pack of liberals who insisted these were individual decisions."
Mr. Brown continued: "The fracas seems quaint today, when one can hear the words that got Lawrence into trouble any night on cable. So why is it still so moving to read the transcript of the trial that made a nation believe, at least for a while, that a free and open mind was a lovely thing to own?"
This was a lovely piece but it had the comfortable advantage of not having to deal with a current situation. It is easy to get righteous about the free-speech issues involving a novel of 50 years ago rather than take on the task of highlighting the battles of those who need help today.
This is not about taking sides on the abortion issue; it is about taking sides in favour of free speech.
The fracas does not seem quaint today.
National Post
clewis@nationalpost.com
Posted in: Holy Post Tags: Anti-Abortion Groups, Carleton Lifeline, Carleton University, Free Speech
