The following is a version of an editorial I submitted to The Peak (Simon Fraser University’s student newspaper) in response to an opinion piece by Mary-Claire Turner of The Genocide Awareness Project. This features an additional paragraph I wrote after the article was printed.

Mary-Claire Turner’s opinion piece in The Peak on behalf of the Genocide Awareness Project is a pertinent reminder that the conservatives who screech the loudest about free speech usually have the very least to say. Any fair-minded person agrees that the morality of abortion is, at the very least, clouded. There is absolutely room in the academic community to have a discussion about these issues, although the sociological necessity of the procedure’s legal accessibility should not be in dispute. But the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) and other anti-choice groups have no interest in free speech or reasoned debate.

Apparently without a trace of irony, Turner in her article chastises the Simon Fraser University administration for encouraging students to “silence one’s opponents rather than prove them wrong with logical arguments”. Comments like these betray the ultimate hypocrisy of Turner and others like her. There is no persuasive rhetoric in GAP’s message. Their campaign is simply a tirade of emotionally manipulative and viscerally impactful symbols, designed specifically to shock and appall. They seek to appeal solely to knee-jerk human sentiments, and offer nothing of intellectual substance. There is no intended logic. There is no argument. The cheap and demeaning connotations of the images are obvious. According to GAP, if you are in favour of a woman’s right to choose, then you are complicit to a gory massacre. If the organization had any legitimate interest in proving others wrong with “logical arguments”, or would like to risk being proven wrong themselves, then they would initiate public discussion forums or something of the sort. But they do not. Their sole focus on campuses across the country has been to demonize pro-choice advocates and psychologically traumatize women who have, or may potentially be in the unfortunate position of having to seek an abortion.

The nonsense about the university’s supposed opposition to debate aside, Turner slips further into delusion to suggest that the university is obligated to provide an unmitigated platform to her organization. On display here is a popular conservative free-speech mania and comic martyrdom. In a free society, you absolutely have every right to say whatever you want, however repugnant. However, the public and its institutional arbiters of cultural meaning and reasoned discourse, universities chief among them, have the freedom to marginalize and exclude you at their discretion. There is no law, and there certainly is no right by principle, that says you are owed a public platform of amplification and relevance. After all this is what the university, and institutions like it, offer to those who deserve it. No one owes you an expressive outlet, and no one owes it to you to listen. The academic community, as a bastion of a healthy public sphere, moderates all kinds of important topical discussions. And just as the university community does not welcome Holocaust-deniers or 9/11 truthers, it may see fit to not accommodate GAP in the way that they desire. Given GAP’s obvious disdain for the values of academia, I think they should be grateful they were given any kind of forum at all.

As I mentioned previously, the morality of abortion is a complex issue. Turner rightly points out that medical science affirms that a fetus is a living organism. And society should be very interested in listening to those who seek to preserve life. But we would be remiss to think that GAP and their traveling carnival of mindless brutality are interested in protecting life. There are plenty of uncontroversial ways that human life can be preserved, in which there is no conflict with the rights of other human beings. Starvation, accessibility to clean water, and poverty are all social issues that could easily be addressed by the relatively privileged members of anti-choice groups. But, instead of campaigning for UNICEF or other useful organizations that demonstrably do save lives, they waste their time and resources circulating meaningless and disgusting images. If anyone involved with GAP were truly concerned with saving lives, they would be just as loudly screaming for increased foreign aid to the people dying of hunger in East Africa.

The other sick hypocrisy is that supposedly “pro-life” groups like GAP, by calling for the criminalization of abortion, incidentally embrace the horrific deaths that have been proven to result from illegally procured and unsafely performed abortions. Anti-choice groups must accept the very likely consequences of their proposed government bans on abortion; the deaths of fully matured adult women, and can therefore hardly call themselves “pro-life” with a straight face. Statistics also suggest that their moral blindness goes further, as a very recent study by the World Health Organization indicated that abortion rates are actually lower in countries where the procedure is legal. By advocating against choice, “pro-life” groups inadvertently champion social policy that may increase, rather than decrease, the frequency of the procedure they decry so vehemently. Clearly, the logical aims of a genuinely “pro-life” group should be not to make abortions illegal, but to reduce the need for the procedure by fighting poverty and providing affordable access to family planning, contraception, and good obstetric health care for women. As a more general concern, abortion bans by law are effectively more of a ban on safe abortions for those of little financial means, as the wealthy will always have the freedom to usurp the intrusion of the state. For conservatives, the abortion issue is yet another opportunity to broaden the privilege of the wealthy while diminishing the rights of the middle and working class.

We cannot take seriously any organization whose priorities are so vulgar and confused, and whose interests so conflicted. It is clear that the GAP is not concerned with life, but control. Control over a woman’s body, control over social policy, and control over public debate. I urge the SFU community, other universities, and the public at large, to recognize the Genocide Awareness Project for what it is: a hypocritical group of control freaks, with a disdain for intellectual conversation, and merely a tertiary interest in preserving life.