Troubled Campus, Troubled Lecture Fund

The Lecture Fund’s inviting Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, to speak on campus is causing pain to significant segments of the Hilltop.  We might wonder, however, whether our troubled Hoyas are over-reacting. After all, isn’t it a high value of a University to welcome all diverse opinions?

We need to emphasize that those who oppose Ms. Richards’ coming do not do so because they oppose the “free exchange of ideas.”  This is the defense the University chooses to use, but it covers over the heart of the matter.  The problem is what she and her organization willingly have done, and continue to do.  They have sponsored 2.8 million abortions since 2006.  And there is also their mercantile trading in the body parts of the dead fetuses.  Even those favoring abortion, like Hilary Clinton, call this “disturbing.”

The moral problem is this: the University is giving a public platform to the head of an organization whose actions expressly and directly contradict Georgetown’s own values.  Even as the University welcomes Ms. Richards, it claims unequivocally: “Georgetown remains firmly committed to the sanctity and human dignity of every life at every stage.” Our troubled Hoyas know that, if a person firmly believes certain actions to be gravely wrong, then that person has an obligation not to cooperate with people who do those actions.  They are thus deeply pained by the University’s failure to defend its own conscience rather than the free speech of Ms. Richards, which is not the problem in any case. They are pained by what they perceive to be self-interested double-talk, rather than honor and integrity.     

To understand our troubled Hoyas further, it is necessary to explore why in their consciences as in the University’s, abortion is gravely wrong.  The fundamental rule of morality is that evil may never be done.  A good purpose never justifies doing a wrong means.  Socrates tells us this when he argues that doing wrong does profound injury, not first and foremost to the person injured, but to the person doing the injuring.  The reason is, doing evil violates the very integrity of our human nature.  

Abortions are evil, and so may not be done, because they terminate innocent lives.  The fertilized ovum is “human life,” as Vice President Biden, who favors legalized abortion, has himself recently affirmed.  It’s equipped from conception with the genetic material that defines it as human.  Furthermore, because human life is a continuum from conception to death, the embryo is also a “person.”  Not of course in the same sense that a freshly born baby is.  But this baby is still a person in the way that you or your grandparents are.  This fact shows that no point exists in the span of human life where it makes any sense to draw an arbitrary line saying here personhood begins or ends.  Finally, this human person is utterly innocent.  It has done nothing wrong that merits any harm.

Because the University publicly proclaims its firm belief in this reality, our troubled Hoyas ask how it can welcome Planned Parenthood in a honored position on its campus, under its name, using its facilities, and having access to its most precious treasure, its young people.  Even if Ms. Richards doesn’t speak about abortion or trading fetal body parts, but addresses a topic that all would consider worthy, like women’s health, the point would still be the same.  The University, by according her a high privilege, compromises its own integrity. People, our troubled Hoyas affirm, ought not to give their own honor to someone whose actions directly violate their conscience.

Still, all these troubles could have been avoided if the Lecture Fund had not rejected a proposal that a fellow Jesuit and I made personally to them in a recent meeting with associates of the Dean of Students’ office.  Organize a balanced program, we suggested, in which a person of equal stature to Ms Richards would articulate the University’s values.  Then both speakers could answer the multitude of questions that conflicting moral views would excitedly generate.  Such a format would enable the Lecture Fund to educate the opinions of its fellow students, as well show a fair-minded commitment to the full “exchange of ideas” on this important matter.  Ms. Richards would be less honored than called to account, as would Georgetown.

Their refusal has, alas, plunged our Hilltop even more deeply into troubling contradictions.  The Lecture Fund claims to be “non-partisan,” but rejects the opportunity to promote the “free exchange of ideas.”  It dismisses the counsel of Jesuits, but uses their name on its website to justify its work.  The University values the sanctity of innocent persons, but cooperates with those who willingly destroy them.  

Does anyone mean what they say, except Ms. Richards?