CUSA goes pro-choice

While it must dismay the conservative cro-magnons behind the publication of the Ottawa Citizen and other local corporate-owned media cronies, last night the Carleton University Students Association (CUSA) passed a motion making the student council a pro-choice body. This was in response to anti-abortion lobbyist groups applying for student funds in order to run a chapter of Lifeline on campus. Lifeline is a group dedicated to the end of legal abortion in Canada.

Recent headlines in local papers like the Shitizen, sorry, pardon me, Citizen (hey this is a blog after all, I am allowed some colloquialisms) have portrayed the motion as a sign that CUSA is against free speech. While the Citizen must be congratulating themselves on selecting the new mayor of Ottawa by acting as Mr. Obrien’s personal campaign advertising platform, perhaps it is time for the Citizen and other corporate owned media outlets to recognize that while they can buy elections and select our governments in the modern MTV anti-intellectual culture of the west, universities are still separate entities which can act in a progressive manner even if the rest of society is moving towards a Dark age.

The Ottawa Citizen is owned by Canwest Global Corporation. In the same way that massive corporations may own both a tobacco company as well as a pharmaceutical company which manufactures cancer fighting drugs, or others may own interests in a arms manufacturer as well as a medical supply company, corporations have also taken over much of our media outlets in order to affect popular opinion in a manner that is beneficial to capitalist interests. Martin Newland, a prominent journalist who has written for the National Post, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Guardian, spoke recently at Carleton University about this decline in the quality and integrity of media outlets. It is important that those in society who recognize this amalgamation of power among a small social elite speak their minds loudly while they still can.

In regards to the motion to make CUSA a pro-choice body, this in no way affects freedom of speech. Backward evangelical groups such as Lifeline still may come on campus and spew their vitriolic views as much as they like, they just cannot do so by being funded by student dollars. Since Canadian society currently sanctions abortion as a legal activity, having Carleton student funds go to a group whose primary goal is making abortion illegal and attempts to spread its message by intimidation of women on campus would be an irresponsible act on the part of CUSA.

And besides, as has already been stated, while the Ottawa Citizen and other corporate owned media outlets may continue to buy elections, buy government policy, and buy the sanctioning of continued environmental degradation in order for a select few to make a profit, this does not mean that their influence immediately moves into the sphere of Carleton University’s affairs. Thankfully this is still one segment of Canadian society that has not been sold to the highest bidder. Not yet at least.

Congratulations on CUSA for doing the right thing. And Lifeline? Perhaps your efforts would be better spent in a more authoritarian state which holds similar views towards women’s rights, states such as the United States of America or Saudi Arabia.