Protesters prevented anti-abortion crusader Jojo Ruba from speaking at Saint Mary's University on Sunday.
Presentation draws similarities between abortion, Jewish genocide
Pro-life speaker astounded lecture at SMU shut down by protesters - Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca
A pro-life speaker is shocked that an aggressive protest shut down his lecture Thursday evening at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.
"If the university gives into this mob rule, then the mob gets to decide who gets to speak on campus," Jojo Ruba said in an interview Sunday night.
Mr. Ruba is in the middle of a speaking tour in Atlantic Canada on behalf of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, a non-profit organization in Calgary that he helped to found.
His lecture is titled Echoes of the Holocaust. He draws similarities between abortion and the genocide of six million Jewish people during the Second World War.
Now that's simply a stupid comparison...... oh well..... continuing on....
Mr. Ruba was invited to speak at Saint Mary’s by members of a new university pro-life group that booked a room through the school’s chaplain.
Demonstrators from the Coalition for Choice arrived just as the lecture started and began chanting over Mr. Ruba’s words and eventually blocked his visual presentation on an overhead projector.
The protesters stayed for over 35 minutes until campus security and Halifax Regional Police arrived and the event was shut down.
Lesley-Anne Steeleworthy, who is chairwoman of the board at the women’s centre at the university, said the lecture topic was "anti-choice" and offensive on "a number of levels."
"It is shocking," Ms. Steeleworthy said Sunday. "It’s comparing women who want the right to choose to being as evil as Hitler."
As a result, her group is considering a human rights complaint against the university chaplain for participating in the event. The chaplain is in his first year in the position.
"The chaplain is supposed to be there for all students on campus, and yet he’s advocating anti-choice," Ms. Steeleworthy said.
"Organizing something so offensive, I think, is pretty rough coming from the chaplain’s office."
Her group plans to hold an emergency meeting today to discuss the issue.
And there was more fallout from the lecture.
The head of the university’s pro-life society said he is also thinking about lodging a complaint against the school administrator who shut the lecture down.
Joseph Westin, a second-year commerce student, said he was shocked that such action was taken.
In an interview Sunday night, he said the protesters should have been escorted out, instead of the other way around.
"It’s sort of a censorship-freedom of speech battle that only really happens when the issue of abortion comes up," Mr. Westin said.
University administrators shouldn’t have buckled to protesters’ demands, said Mr. Ruba.
"They said we had to move off campus . . . and I wasn’t too happy about it," he said, noting that the chaplain opened up a room at nearby Canadian Martyrs Church on Inglis Street.
The university’s public affairs officer was not available for comment Sunday.
The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform is no stranger to controversy.
In fact, Mr. Ruba said the centre trains its speakers to "rationally defend what we believe in" because they know it invites controversy.
How, by calling women and the males who support their choice Nazis?
People get into a big storm when you compare the US or Israel to Nazis.... but labeling or comparing women who want the right to choose as Nazis commiting genocide like in the holocaust is
"Rationally Defending what they believe in?"
Nobody's putting bullets into the fetus's heads, nobody is putting them in gas chambers, nobody's tossing them into ovens, or making them work slave labour..... just for the sake of them being fetuses, like just for the sake of them being Jewish..... people have the choice to determine if they want or can have a child or not...... this doesn't mean those who are pro-choice are going to automatically kill any fetuses they may end up carrying..... they may actually (And many do) want to have a child.
I want to have a child or two someday, but I'm still pro-chocie..... that does not mean I'm going to make sure anytime in the future my gf get's pregnant we're going to have an abortion 100% of the time.
They wouldn't know rationality if it bit them in the ass.
Thursday’s lecture marked the first time a speaker from the centre couldn’t give their full presentation at such an event.
"We have (had) people upset at us, but they usually protest before or after the event," Mr. Ruba said.
Well welcome to Nova Scotia.
The usual pattern is to invite protesters to "exchange ideas" and engage in "polite debate," he said.
Kinda hard to do that when you brand the other side of the argument as Nazi Jew Killers..... I could very well see how many would take that to offense and personally.
Fly into Israel, stand right in front of a crowd of Israelis, point your finger at them and tell them they're all a bunch of Nazis for what they're doing in Gaza and see how much of a
"polite debate" you'll end up having.
See, I limit what I call Nazis, by calling just the Israeli government for what I see it as.... but when you label an entire population with blanket statements such as the above, you're simply asking for trouble.
And then you cry foul when that trouble you created comes your way?
Deal with it.
"We do it all across the country. . . . But . . . (the Halifax protesters) didn’t want to. They wanted to shut us down and call us names."
You called them names first.... some of the worse kind you could think of.... wtf do you expect moron? Oops... there's another name for ya.
Mr. Ruba plans to be at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish today and Tuesday.
Good luck.
