Thank you Feministing!

Earlier this week, the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform was kicked off of St. Mary’s University campus, in Halifax. Jose Ruba (one of the co-founders) was giving a speech entilted "Echoes of the Holocaust", part of their Genocide Awareness Project, which I’ve seen mentioned before in the Feministing community. It’s an idiotic attempt to label abortion as a genocide by making connections between a woman’s right to choose and the Holocaust, the bosnian genocide, slavery and other tragic and wholley unrelated events.  Pro-choice students chanted and blocked the projector so that the presentation could not start and when RCMP and campus police were called it was decided by the administration that the event was not something they wanted on campus and it was moved to a chapel nearby. Of course, this has given the CCBR and other anti-choice organizations a soap-box, on which to stand and declare that academia is choosing sides in the abortion debate and blocking free speech.

When word got out that this same speaker was coming to our campus, organizers had less than 24 hours to get a counter protest together. It was decided we would go in a different route because no one wanted the anti-choice group on campus to be able to say we infringed on their freedom of speech. So, 20 minutes into the presentation our counter-protesters stood up and silently walked out of the room. It was incredibly moving to see half of the people gathered stand up together and walk without a word to the door. Once out, a small group of us set up in the foyer outside the room where the speech was held, and taped up posters reading "Stand up to Hate Speech" and "Choice Without Shame". We also had information with real facts about choice and abortion, and pamphlets on abortion for women.

The reaction to us was mixed – from people who had remained in the lecture purely for curiousity’s sake giving us their support, to smirks and smug looks from members of the anti-choice group and to a suggestion that we had some terrible scheme for when the speaker came out (from a man who tried to get the local women’s resource centre closed because it might be an undergound abortion clinic). We didn’t need to feel validated in what we were doing, but when a Physics prof came and thanked us for what we were doing  and said "I lost 80% of my family in the Holocaust – this man had no idea what he’s talking about", it was hard not to feel the importance in our cause.

I’m sorry for the long story and I hope you’ll forgive me because my intention is to thank you, the Feministing community. Before last night I had never taken a stand for my beliefs. I have always identified as a feminist and as pro-choice but wasn’t open about it, fearing ridicule or rejection. Over the last few months I have read your posts about facing such reactions, about how you stand up against what is demeaning, hurtful and offensive, all written with such intelligence, insight and humour that I was shamed in my own closet-feminism. Now, I feel liberated. Thank you!