An abortion debate at York University in Toronto—a public univeristy, and the third-largest university in Canada—was cancelled by the university’s Student Union just hours before it was scheduled to take place. Margaret Fung, the president of the pro-life group Students for Bioethical Awareness—one of the groups that sponsored tried to sponsor the debate—said:
I was told in a meeting by members of the York Federation of Students [YFS] that debating abortion is comparable to debating whether a man should be allowed to beat his wife. They said that there is freedom of speech to a limit, and that abortion is not an issue to debate. They demanded that the event not take place and shut us down. [emphasis added]
The interesting thing is that debating abortion is actually like debating whether a man should be allowed to beat his wife—only for the exact opposite reason why the YFS thinks it is. Also at this meeting, Fung says that Jeremy Salter, the executive director of YFS, “compared pro-lifers to the KKK”. Considering the report UCLA pro-life students released last week about Planned Parenthood employees’ willingness to take donations for the specific purpose of killing black babies, Salter’s comparison was, um, not very well timed.
