NUS HOLDS DAY OF PRO-ABORTION POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING
Back in September 2004, Student LifeNet warned that your National Union of Students (NUS) was planning a year of zealous campaigning in favour of abortion. As anticipated, on Wednesday it held a “Pro-Choice Day” with guest speakers from organisations supporting third-trimester abortions, such as ‘Abortion Rights’. They were also accompanied – possibly illegally– by the Oxford University Students’ Union.
This event made it even clearer that the NUS does not merely support the existing legislation on abortion. No – it wants abortion on demand, and up to birth. This extremist agenda is highly unlikely to find favour with the majority of students who mostly support a middle-of-the-road position on abortion. The opening speech by Jo Salmon, NUS Women’s Officer, twice called for free abortion on demand. “It’s not just about defending a woman’s right to choose - it’s about extending it,” she said. It seems that she wouldn’t be content with this policy just in the UK – she’s set her sights on the entire world. “It’s my body - it should be my decision. Not yours, not my doctor’s, not society’s. And that should apply across the world.”
It’s hard to see what relevance such campaigning has to any student. The official purpose of the NUS, taken from its website, is to “[represent] the interests of around five million students in further and higher education throughout the United Kingdom” with no mention of using the money supplied by university unions to campaign on whatever contentious, highly political issue takes its fancy, inside or outside the UK.
Demonstrating the extent to which Jo Salmon is out of touch with reality, she not only claimed that we “throw dolls covered in red paint” but that we also make “threats against doctors who carry out abortions”. Actually Jo, whilst you’re busy making ridiculous comments, we’re lobbying for a change in the abortion law.
To be even-handed though, we do share one thing in common. We whole-heartedly agree with the proposal to increase financial support and childcare availability for young mothers, ideas which we have always strongly promoted. These issues are actually relevant to students with babies or young children. Yes, there are students who have abortions, but the purpose of this event was not to support their actions. It was to push a controversial political agenda supported only by a fringe minority.
Feminist author India Knight’s recent comments in the Sunday Times (below) refer to a different pro-choice group but they seem equally applicable to the NUS:
"A group of complete nutters, campaigning under the pro-choice banner, want MPs to scrap the time limit on abortion, this currently being (dreadfully, to my mind) 24 weeks. The Pro-Choice Forum says such a change in the law would help women who are afraid to tell their parents or partners or who might lose their job. Curiously enough they don’t explain how killing a six or seven or eight-month-old baby would help such women to cope emotionally.
It would appear this group is either made up of the criminally insane or of women who have never had either a child or an abortion: until now, even the most vociferous pro-choicer would agree that abortion is a process that is not entirely untraumatic. Calling for the legalised killing of viable foetuses is just beyond belief. How do these people sleep at night?”
Click
here for our press contact details
