Communiqué
Unplanned & Disconnected
A Plan to Show Students a Pro-life Film Exposes Academic Infidelity by Rory Leishman
For a striking illustration of the moral and spiritual degradation that afflicts so many ostensibly Christian universities in North America, consider the uproar over a screening earlier this year of the pro-life movie Unplanned at King's University College at Western University in London, Ontario.
Given that King's describes itself on its website as a "Catholic, liberal arts, university college," one might suppose that university administrators would have welcomed an on-campus screening of Unplanned. Joseph Naumann, archbishop of Kansas City and chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has lauded the film as the true story of how Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood abortion-clinic director and employee-of-the-year, was so horrified by witnessing an ultrasound-guided abortion of a 13-week-old baby in the womb that she quit her job and soon became one of the foremost pro-life champions in the United States and Canada. Unplanned, Naumann enthused, is "the story of conversion, redemption, mercy and hope." The film
has the ability to change hearts, to protect women and men from experiencing the pain of abortion, and to help those who have been affected by it seek the healing that they need and that God desires for them. I was deeply moved by her story and urge you to go see the film.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia likewise admonished: "See This Movie: It Matters."
Yet despite such authoritative backing by leaders of the Catholic Church, no fewer than 44 faculty members at King's (out of a total of about 420 full-time and part-time faculty and staff) fired off a protest letter to University Principal David Malloy over the decision of Campus Ministry, the chaplaincy office at King's, to hold a screening of Unplanned on campus on January 10. In the protestors' letter, which the King's University College Faculty Association published without comment on its website, the dissident professors derided Unplanned as "anti-abortion propaganda that incorporates graphic and inaccurate depictions of abortion."
Protesting Unplanned
The 44 dissident professors also maintained that for the purpose of "truth-seeking through respectful dialogue and disagreement," Campus Ministry should have ensured that the screening of Unplanned was "appropriately framed through the formal inclusion of faculty members or other experts." Which faculty members? Which experts? The inference is clear: these professors think Campus Ministry should have formally invited critics like themselves to lambaste the film before the viewing
audience.
As it was, the protestors lamented that they had "lost the opportunity to model to our students and the broader community the methods of inquiry and debate that are at the centre of the liberal arts." Yet as the professors' letter itself testified, there remained no end of opportunities at King's for professors to model their understanding of legitimate debate over Unplanned.
Pitting "Truth" Against Life
The protesting professors were particularly upset over a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) interview in which Father Michael Béchard, King's chaplain and the director of Campus Ministry, explained, "We chose to show the movie Unplanned because it's really consistent with our general ethic of life at King's. We support life as a Catholic institution from conception until natural death."
Rory Leishman is a former lecturer in political science at the University of Western Ontario and national affairs columnist for the London Free Press. Now a freelancer, he writes a regular column for the Interim: Canada's Life and Family Newspaper.
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