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NEWS & LETTERS, October 2001

CBU bans speaker

Memphis, Tenn.-While it's no surprise that abortion rights is a contentious subject in the South, it is surprising when some in the progressive community end up on the wrong side of the question. We've been dealing with this ever since the president of Christian Brothers University (CBU), Stanislaus Sobczyk, banned civil rights activist Rev. James Lawson from giving the keynote speech for Pax Christi on campus because he is a board member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Even worse, a prominent peace and anti-death penalty activist supported the CBU president. When I cited these developments as a reason for the Women's Action Coalition (WAC) to meet, and called Sobczyk's actions "woman bashing," an anti-Iraq sanctions activist wrote on a local email list that banning Lawson had no relationship to woman bashing, lecturing me that "many feminists, many radicals...are pro-life."

My response explained, "When James Lawson was refused the opportunity to speak...the reason given was that...since he supported a woman's right to control her own body-and that is what is at issue here-he was advocating violence and would not be allowed to speak. To me, this is woman bashing...If an abortion is seen as a violent act...who is perpetrating this violence?... The logic of the argument is that a woman who chooses to control her own body by having an abortion is doing horrible violence... The woman is a murderer. This is woman bashing..."

The debate is also being played out in the free weekly, THE MEMPHIS FLYER, where a CBU alumna wrote an opinion piece asking, "What was CBU afraid of?" She was answered in a letter by the peace activist who insisted that CBU "was not acting out of fear but was courageously challenging Pax Christi..."

WAC responded that CBU was "afraid that those who heard Rev. Lawson would discover that one could be passionately non-violent as well as be for a woman's right to control her own body. The abortion-equals-violence equation erases women from the discussion. When women are the focus, the violence done by those who make abortion illegal or unobtainable becomes clear."

We have our fingers crossed that THE MEMPHIS FLYER will publish the WAC letter. The struggle here continues.

-Terry Moon

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