York University - Marketplace Of Censorship

Yet another student union is considering an outright ban on pro-life groups. A handful of pro-abort activists in the York Federation of Students took advantage of the summer recess to declare fetal rights supporters as "sexists" and to outline their own guidelines for a politically correct abortion debate:

Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it "within a pro-choice realm," and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance.

More >>>

In other words - the only abortion debate they are comfortable with is pro-abort versus extreme pro-abort, "abortion is good" versus "abortion is doubleplus good". But God forbid anyone says that abortion is bad. Massa & Co promise to investigate all clubs to ensure compliance - apparently by sending undercover agents (our future "human rights" commissioners I suppose) to sign up as members and monitor the meetings.

"You have to recognize that a woman has a choice over her own body," Ms. Massa said. "We think that these pro-life, these anti-choice groups, they're sexist in nature.... The way that they speak about women who decide to have abortions is demoralizing. They call them murderers, all of them do.... Is this an issue of free speech? No, this is an issue of women's rights."

If so then why aren't Massa & Co willing to debate it as such? If they believe that pro-lifers are sexists, why don't they invite a few pro-lifers to a debate and tell them so? From what I recall, they actually had a chance to do so a few months ago when Jose Ruba, a speaker for the Canadian Centre For Bio-Ethical Reform was to participate in a debate at the campus.

Why did they chose to cancel the debate back then, rather than giving each side an equal opportunity to express its arguments and let the audience decide who is right? After all, even if they couldn't convince Jose that abortions are ok, they would have a chance to convince the audience not to listen to pro-lifers. Why did they choose to reject that opportunity?

Say whatever you want but to me it looks like Massa & Co just don't believe they could ever win a fetal rights debate, so they try to silence the opponents instead of arguing with them. Hopefully those moves will bring them the very same public humiliation they're trying to avoid by banning pro-life groups from campus.