York University Anti-Choice Funding Cut

York U to ban funding for anti-abortion groups

(follow the link to the article in The Star)

Abortion related groups on campus have popped up in Ryerson's student newspaper, The Eyeopener, a few times in the last year. And every time I'm conflicted. Now York U has formally moved to cut funding from anti-choice groups.

And yea, I like using the term "anti-choice." While both "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are loaded and misleading terms, I find the heart of the issue is the choices of the woman, not the "life" of the fertilized egg.

...thats a debate for another post that I frankly don't have the will to make.

The issue of this post is the funding cut.

On the one hand, being pro-choice, this news makes me happy. I find many anti-choice groups are chock full of misinformation and oppression, to put it lightly.

But on the other hand, isn't this a censorship issue? The ruling takes a viewpoint and tells it to shut up. In most cases, I'd say that is the wrong thing to do.

But.

In an Eyeopener article about the same issue at another university, a member of the Canadian Federation of Students said this:

“You wouldn’t take public money to put in an organization that moves to take away people’s rights, you wouldn’t fund the KKK,” said Shelley Melanson, Women’s Representative on the National Executive of the CFS. “Not with student space. Not with student resources.”

And there it is. The reason why censorship isn't always the correct argument.

To give some perspective, would any university dare fund a group that exists for the sole purpose of opposing the right to same-sex marriage?

What about a group opposing a woman's right to vote?

Well, no, of course not. Because we seem to be at a place where bold acts of homophobia and misogyny are condemned (at least the obvious ones, once again thats a whole other post).

Abortion rights are too often not seen as a women's right issue, and more of a murdering, bloody, moral fortitude issue. Seeing York's ban as a censorship issue just shows that we have not allowed abortion rights to hit the mainstream in the same way women's suffrage and anti-homophobia has.

It's going to take more steps like York's banning to normalize a woman's right to her own body, so bring 'em on.