The College Fix

Texas has been at the center of the national debate over abortion lately. Abortion advocates all over the country celebrated the publicity stunt state senator Wendy Davis pulled with her filibuster, which momentarily stalled restrictions on late-term abortions in the state, calling her a “hero.”

But there’s another story in Texas that, unsurprisingly, didn’t receive quite as much attention. While the nation celebrated the late-term abortion advocacy of Sen. Wendy Davis, a group of young pro-life students found out that their efforts to express very different views on the subject were met with hatred and hostility.

As Students For Life reports in a recent press release:

Students for Life of America (SFLA) …had worked out an arrangement with the associate branch director of the Town Lake branch of the Austin YMCA to use their showers for the week of the ‘Students #Stand4Life Bus Tour.’  Previously, YMCA management had indicated everything was working out great, but certain orange-shirted members of the club said that it was “too political” to have pro-lifers in the showers — and pressured management to give the students the boot.

“We had absolutely no problems on Monday night when we used their facilities.The YMCA management was respectful, but some angry pro-abortion activists were being very aggressive with YMCA staff members and the staff said they felt threatened,” said Brendan O’Morchoe, Director of Field Operations with SFLA. “Unfortunately, the anger and rage from the pro-abortion protestors has created a toxic environment even outside the Capitol Building.  It’s really a shame that the YMCA was bullied by these people, it just goes to show how pro–aborts operate every day.

“The YMCA has a long history of helping young people and always had an open door policy to everyone, yet we were turned away because of our pro-life beliefs…”

Read more on this story here.

Just a reminder: YMCA stands for Young Men’s Christian Association. But there wasn’t much that was very Christian about the way the group treated these young pro-life activists, who were bothering no one, but simply wanted to use the shower facilities like any other member of the public might. Yet, remarkably, they seem to have been turned away for no other reason than their political and moral beliefs.

If you are under the mistaken impression that leading pro-abortion activists in this country desire a fair, reasoned debate on the issue, then let this story disabuse you of that notion. As Ross Douthat wrote in an insightful column on the Texas abortion debate over the weekend, there used to be room, even among liberals, for differences of opinion on this issue. “Pro-life liberalism — that once-commonplace, now-mythical persuasion” used to be rather common in the Democratic party. But no longer. And there’s a reason for that change. It’s the result of decades of lobbying by radical abortion advocates on the left.

Now we face the following political reality: Radical feminist organizations such as NOW and NARAL have taken such control of the Democratic party, and enforced such unrelenting ideological litmus tests on political candidates, that there is almost no such thing as a pro-life Democrat anymore, although famous Democrats such as Al Gore and Teddy Kennedy were once among their ranks.

Furthermore, the rigid and aggressive enforcement of the radical abortion agenda has become so fierce in this country that the U.S. has by far the most liberal abortion laws among western democratic nations–and even suggesting that late-term abortions, for example, ought to be restricted (as they are in most progressive nations of Europe) provokes the most extreme and relentless crackdown from American liberals.

It’s gotten so bad that even a few pro-life students on a bus tour trying to get a shower at the YMCA are the targets of their malice and discrimination.

Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.

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(Image Source: Students For Life of America)