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Email: "Pro-Aborts at University of BC Censor Pro-Life Display"

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BY LifeSiteNews.com By Patrick B. CraineVANCOUVER, B.C., March 15, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dozens of pro-abortion protesters at the University of British Columbia (UBC) disrupted a pro-life demonstration last Tuesday, which was being sponsored by the University's pro-life club, Lifeline.The club was running the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), which compares abortion to past genocidal atrocities - displaying, for example, an image of a Holocaust victim beside an image of an aborted baby. Lifeline has run a GAP campaign nearly every semester since the fall of 1999.  The campus pro-abortion group, Students for Reproductive Choice (SRC), usually lines up with their own protest opposite the GAP displays. This year the two groups had signed an agreement with the Student Union stating that they would stay 30 feet away from each other and remain civil and peaceful during the demonstration.“Unfortunately, certain students from the SRC club did not follow protocol,” said Ania Kasprzak, co-president of Lifeline. SRC members, along with other protesters from the University of Victoria and the Vancouver community, moved in front of the GAP display, where they held large yellow banners with pro-abortion slogans such as, “Unwanted Pregnancy is NOT a choice” and “Full Access to Free Abortion.”Kasprzak told LifeSiteNews (LSN) in an e-mail that it was “an emotional day for all involved” and asserted that the members of Lifeline “were not treated with the fundamental rights of a Canadian Citizen.”“We were denied the right to freedom of expression, and our attempt at sharing the painful reality of abortion with the students of UBC was met with chanting, censorship and discrimination,” she wrote.“The University did not make any effort to remove the protesters and did not intervene on behalf of the Pro-life students representing GAP.”Stephanie Gray, co-founder and executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, who attended the event, told LSN that university representatives maintained that the protesters were free to stand in front of the display because they were not UBC students, and so were not bound by the agreement made between the pro-life and pro-abortion groups.“My response was to say to them: 'So essentially you're saying non-students have more freedom on this campus than students, because students are limited to the one area',” explained Gray, who is a UBC alumna.She also said that the university has made pains to limit the event for years in ways that she called “unjust and unreasonable.”The pro-life club is only allowed to host the display once per semester, and only between 10 am and 2 pm.  They are limited to 4 signs that each have to face the same direction, said Gray; whereas the GAP displays in other places, such as the University of Calgary, feature 10 to 12 signs.  She said it was even more “frustrating” this year because they were told beforehand that the displays had to be set up to face each other in a U shape, which limited visibility even more.Gray said that they “fully support the right to express one's self from the other side, to make the claims they want, but not to suppress us.”  Setting the pro-abortion banners in front of the pro-life display, she said, “was a clear sign that they were interested in suppression not expression, because they could have been just as visible in other areas.”Lifeline was “intimidated and bullied and the university didn't stop it,” Gray added.  “So they participated in the bullying by letting it happen.”Kasprzak noted that, following the event, she has spoken with “a great number of UBC Pro-choice students who are siding with us and shocked at the way the University treated the campus Pro-life students.”“Some of their testimonies demonstrate that it is not only Pro-Life people who are outraged over this blatant injustice against human rights,” she said. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pro-aborts-at-university-of-bc-censor-pro-life-display/

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