Pro-abortion students’ increasingly aggressive efforts to undermine the pro-life presence on their campuses is a sign of weakness, not strength.
What are pro-abortion students so afraid of?
P olitical discourse is dying on college campuses. In 2021, more than 60 percent of undergraduates believed their campus climate inhibited students from voicing their beliefs, while 60 percent also expressed personal reluctance to discuss even one controversial topic. These should be harrowing figures for anyone who values open dialogue and objective truth, but they are especially troubling for pro-life students who participate in campus conversations to change hearts and minds at their schools.
As liberal journalist and Honestly podcast host Bari Weiss plainly stated last summer:
“While the brand name schools have the money, they no longer have the mission. They have fundamentally abandoned the point of the university, which is the pursuit of truth . . . de–platforming has become a regular feature of American life as the politics of censoriousness and forced conformity and ideological obedience have taken hold.”
While it is encouraging that some liberals like Weiss have begun to recognize the complications of socially imposed speech limitations, conservative students, especially pro-life advocates, continue to feel the brunt of campus hostility to free speech.
Indeed, since the Supreme Court acknowledged in Dobbs that there is no constitutional right to abortion — giving the pro-life movement the opportunity to codify the rights of the preborn for the first time in almost 50 years — pro-life students have increasingly come under fire from abortion supporters. Dobbs was a big blow for them, and now they are working aggressively to undermine the dialogue on campuses that routinely benefits the pro-life movement, as evidenced by reactions across New England to the Students for Life of America (SFLA) annual fall tour, which I help facilitate as SFLA’s New England Regional Coordinator.
This year, our message was simple: Abortion Is Not Right, It’s Wrong. Designed to respond directly to a post-Dobbs climate and explain why life — rather than abortion — is a constitutional right, we expected students to have objections. But rather than voicing their criticism, at all but three of the schools we visited, pro-abortion students refused to engage at all, instead opting for harassment and protest.
The most extreme example followed the tour’s first stop at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Despite a mostly favorable live reception, hundreds of pro-abortion students later flooded Instagram to harass WPI’s pro-life organization. Pro-abortion students accosted group members, created a petition to discontinue the organization, and submitted an eleven-page complaint to the administration. While some criticized the display’s content, others simply condemned the school for allowing a pro-life group a platform:
“It is disgusting and outrageous that such a hateful club is allowed to exist on campus, especially in light of the recent SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. At a time when women’s health is in great jeopardy, this is no time to allow a club such as this to exist . . . At a STEM-driven institution that prides itself on making fact-based decisions, I am appalled that this club has any place on our campus.”
While WPI students called for institutional intervention, students at other colleges have attempted to undermine pro-life speech with social pressure. At Virginia’s William & Mary University, for example, students went beyond the now-typical verbal aggression and threw a cup of urine at pro-lifers. At the University of Missouri, the police had to intervene as a pro-abortion mob pushed over the pro-life display.
Likewise, dozens of students protested the tour at the University of New Hampshire, intimidating passing students and inhibiting productive dialogue. At the University of Connecticut, a demonstration blocked the display and defaced it with coat hangers, with one dissenter stealing two poster boards.
Let’s be clear: The problem with these demonstrations is not simply that they represent a pro-abortion perspective but that they create an atmosphere to thwart any sort of civil discourse. This is not solely the fault of university administrators, but our broader culture and the sort of attitudes it incentivizes.
Modern campuses emphasize safety over learning. In response, students choose affirmation in lieu of challenging ideas and respond violently to anything that prompts them to question their preconceptions.
With that in mind, we should remember that pro-abortion students’ increasingly aggressive efforts to undermine the pro-life presence on their campuses is a sign of weakness, not strength.
The pro-life movement’s messaging is effective, so pro-abortion students would prefer to shut down the discussion before it can happen to ensure that they never have to admit that they’re wrong.
This is often frustrating, but pro-life students would do well to see their peers’ rejection as an opportunity. Indeed, by peacefully persisting through protests and violence, students can make the case for free speech and life, and show those willing to be persuaded that open dialogue leads people to the pro-life position.