Pro Life Society: Why Liverpool Guild of Students was wrong
Liverpool University Guild of Students has recently approved a ‘Pro Life Society’, who recently posted on their Facebook page “Join us to defend every innocent life from conception until natural death”.
I’d like to make it clear that I’m not against the idea of a Pro- Life society, simply because I disagree with their viewpoint. Even on Warwick’s own campus there are societies that don’t share the same opinions and point of view as me, such as certain political societies, yet I wouldn’t suggest they shouldn’t exist. To do so would be an impediment on freedom of speech.
However, abortion is not a political issue. It is a medical procedure, and it isn’t the right of other people, no matter how strongly they feel in favour of pro-life, to suppress a woman’s right to choose. Being pro-choice does not mean you are necessarily pro-abortion. It simply means that you are accepting of a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and whether or not she carries and births a child.
Abortion is not a political issue. It is a medical procedure
Pregnancy and childbirth is one of the most physically demanding things you can put a person’s body through, and the idea that someone else should be able to make that decision for someone is ridiculous to me. However, this is not about pro-life versus pro-choice but instead why a pro-life society should not exist in the university platform.
Abortion may not be what everyone would choose to do, but the reality is sometimes it is a choice that someone decides to make. Universities, and particularly Student Union’s have a duty to provide support to all students. By allowing a society such as a Pro-Life society to exist, Liverpool’s Guild of Students is allowing female students to feel intimidated and shamed, and unsupported by their university.
This is not about pro-life versus pro-choice but instead why a pro-life society should not exist in the university platform
University and societies are great places to prosper debate and expand your mind to other points of view. However, I don’t believe an issue like abortion deserves a platform for discussion, particularly a platform where a gender that will never have to face the decision of bearing a child (aka men) will be able to express and tell women what they should think.
I’m aware it sounds exclusionary to say that men shouldn’t be allowed to have opinions on abortion, and I’m not saying they can’t have an opinion: merely that they shouldn’t be given a louder voice than women.
I don’t believe an issue like abortion deserves a platform for discussion
Ultimately, abortion has always been and will always be a controversial issue. I’m not saying we shouldn’t engage in debate around abortion, merely that a bias platform that increases hostility towards vulnerable students is simply not necessary in a university setting.
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“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and that one had the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he would be in silencing them if he could. You might think that silencing only one couldn’t be so very wrong, but that is mistaken, and here is why·. If an opinion were a personal possession of no value except to the person who has it, so that being obstructed in the enjoyment of it was simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the harm was inflicted on only a few persons or on many. But the special wrongness of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing not one individual, but the human race, posterity as well as the present generation, those who dissent from the opinion as well as those who hold it.
Indeed, those who dissent are wronged more than those who agree. If the opinion in question is right, they are robbed of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; and if it is wrong, they lose a benefit that is almost as great, namely the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth that would come from its collision with error.”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.
Free speech is sacred.