Campus Conservatives and Pro-lifers Fight for Truth

Discrimination against conservatives on campus is a dramatic story being told by Peter Fricke and other great reporters at CampusReform.org. In many cases, however, pro-lifers at colleges and universities across the country are pushing back. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, has been reporting not only on how “progressives” are running rampant, but how pro-life students are making their views and presence felt. Her organization has sponsored more than 900 student groups on campuses representing all 50 states. Here are some recent examples of where conservative and pro-life students and faculty are fighting back:

• Notre Dame will be giving pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden the oldest and most prestigious honor accorded to American Catholics at their graduation ceremony this spring. The Notre Dame Chapter of University Faculty for Life opposes the University’s decision, saying it’s “a scandalous violation of the University’s moral responsibility” and that Catholics should never honor “those who act in defiance of fundamental moral principles about the sanctity of life.” It notes that Biden “has for decades conspicuously rejected Church teaching about life. He has rejected it repeatedly and consistently in the context of abortion, where (he has been quoted as saying) he would not want to ‘impose’ this teaching upon a woman and her doctor. He also favors killing embryonic human beings for research purposes, even to the extent of committing taxpayers’ money to support it.”
• Loyola Marymount University, another well-known Catholic university in California, has asked disgraced, pro-abortion former President Bill Clinton to give their 2016 commencement address. The Cardinal Newman Society called it “a new low in the University’s repeated betrayal of its Catholic mission.”
• At the University of Iowa, the school administration decided that Students for Life sidewalk chalk messages were too “offensive” and had them removed. The messages included “abortion stops 3200 hearts each day in the US,” “women deserve better than abortion,” “Students for Life supports pregnant and parenting students,” and “Smile, your mom chose life.”
• At Southern Methodist University, the Students for Life group created a cemetery with 3,000 crosses to represent the number of lives lost to abortion every day. Members came out the next day to find out their entire display had been taken down.
• The University of North Georgia Students For Life revealed photographs of decapitated baby cookies taken at a pro-abortion rally held by the North Georgia Skeptics Society, an atheist group on campus. The pro-abortion table included baby-shaped cookies, some with their heads cut off to signify dismemberment. The North Georgia Skeptics Society said it was a misunderstanding and that “many of the fetus shaped cookies broke of their own accord.”
• The University of Colorado at Boulder initially rejected funding for the campus Students for Life group to host Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood Director and now pro-life advocate, as a speaker. The funding to the group from the university’s Cultural Events Board was denied because the Johnson speech was not considered “educational” and balanced. The Alliance Defending Freedom was consulted for help in the case, and noted in response that speakers that the Board had previously funded included one-sided lectures from Angela Davis, recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize and former leader of the Communist Party USA; transgender activist Janet Mock; Bernie Sanders’ socialist buddy Cornel West, and Jose Antonio Vargas, a pro-illegal immigration activist. Eventually, the event received full funding and Johnson was able to come and give her speech.

As we reported, Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic and Jesuit institution of higher learning in America, hosted Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards. The campus Students for Life group brought Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood Director, to campus the same day. Her organization, And Then There Were None, is dedicated to helping abortion workers and doctors leave the industry.

As if conservatives didn’t face enough liberals on campus, the richly endowed leftist outfit known as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is trying to establish “Southern Poverty Law Center clubs” on colleges and universities. The website for this effort recommends use of the SPLC “Hate Map,” a device that inspired a homosexual militant to open fire with a weapon in the offices of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. The gay terrorist wounded a security guard and had intended to massacre the staff in protest over the FRC’s support for traditional marriage.

The SPLC is still offering “Teaching Tolerance educational kits,” even though one of its projects had previously praised communist terrorist bomber Bill Ayers as a “civil rights organizer, radical anti-Vietnam War activist, teacher and author.” An “editor’s note” in one SPLC publication went so far as to say that Ayers had become “a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education.”

On the other hand, the SPLC uses the “hate” and “extremist” label to deny conservatives a voice on college campuses. The SPLC was a factor in the recent decision by the tax-funded SUNY New Paltz administration to cancel a debate on campus simply because I was included in it. I have filed a Freedom of Information request under state law for all of the evidence in this censorship case. We want the names of all of those faculty members and administrators involved in subverting academic freedom on campus.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org

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