A sophomore at Northwestern University recently criticized a campus center for promoting abortion, despite the school’s pledge of institutional neutrality.
Northwestern’s Center for Awareness, Response and Education refers to abortions, according to Thomas Belej. He wrote an opinion piece in the campus newspaper, The Daily Northwestern.
“Abortions are essential health care that people seek for many reasons, all of which are valid,” the page states.
But this is problematic, according to Belej:
While this statement and the descriptions of abortion that follow may sound neutral, they insult the values of NU’s pro-life students and faculty, who understand abortion to be a grave injustice that takes the life of an innocent and defenseless unborn child. Calling abortion “essential health care” and describing it as “gentle” while we believe that it violently kills a person excludes us from respectful dialogue.
The statement violates institutional neutrality according to Belej, because it “unapologetically picks one side over the other and tries to tell pro-life students and faculty that our ideas are not welcome in our own university.” The university officially announced its policy on Sep. 27.
He said that pro-choice groups can promote abortion, but it should not be done through official university institutions.
“By embracing neutrality on many of these issues over the past few months, NU has taken noble steps toward welcoming ideological minorities on campus,” he wrote. “However, if it doesn’t remove CARE’s statement and extend that same welcome to the pro-life minority, no matter how small and inconvenient we may seem, its words will be meaningless.”
IMAGE: Drew Petrimoulx/Shutterstock
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