The College Fix

Students who look up local pro-bono organizations on the Boston College Law School website may be surprised to find the contact information listed for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

The web page, included under the academic programs category at bc.edu/law, is a list of organizations that students are encouraged to contact should they “line up with [their] own personal mission of service.”

The page lists contact information for Planned Parenthood’s volunteer coordinator and the address of the clinic on Commonwealth Avenue. According to Planned Parenthood’s website, the clinic provides in-clinic abortions, the abortion pill, and referrals for abortions.

Contact information on the BC Law site

Nate Kenyon, Director of Marketing and Communications at BC Law, defended the link in a statement to The Observer.

“We offer a variety of links on our website to many different kinds of organizations where our students might pursue their professional advancement and public service work. These links do not imply a Boston College endorsement of any organization.”

“As law students who will be making important decisions for clients in only a few years, we feel that our students can educate themselves and make their own decisions based on what’s best for them,” said Kenyon.

Laura Balch, president of Lex Vitae, the BC Law student pro-life society, believes that the inclusion of such an organization is incompatible with BC’s mission as a Catholic institution.

“At best, it’s an embarrassment that we would have something so blatantly antagonistic to the Catholic faith on our pro-bono website,” she said.

“It’s sad that BC Law would undermine students’ faithful efforts to save human lives in our community,” said Ian Fitzmorris, one of several BC students who regularly participate in demonstrations outside the clinic each Saturday.

The page begins, quoting from the BC Law School Mission Statement, reading: “We encourage our students to develop their own individual commitment to others and to explore those themes which are central to the Jesuit tradition: the dignity of the human person, the advancement of the common good and compassion for the poor.”

Balch also emphasized that “the Jesuit tradition, Catholic social teaching…sees our fellow human beings as worthy of complete respect and complete dignity.”

“[The link to Planned Parenthood] suggests that the Jesuit tradition, the Catholic tradition needs to be more respected and more central. There are small ways to make that more central and one of the ways is not [posting] something that is so antithetical to the Catholic tradition,” said Balch.

The link has been on the BC Law website for at least a year. The National Catholic Register, in a June 2009 article, quoted a study by the Cardinal Newman Society which referenced the Planned Parenthood contact information. The article listed BC as part of “Ten Catholic Colleges that Promote Abortion.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns abortion as an intrinsic evil: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law (2271).”

“The idea that you would protect the weakest people, the innocent and the vulnerable, is at the core of the Catholic Tradition,” said Balch.

The Career Services office at BC Law did not respond to requests for comment.

Andy Rota is a staff writer for the BC Observer and a student at Boston College.

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