Auckland University Students Association Backs Down on Disaffiliation of Auckland University Pro-Life Group
The Auckland University Students Association (AUSA) has backed down from its initial decision to disaffiliate ProLife
Auckland from the Association. The decision to pull a ‘U Turn’, seems to have been as a result of the Association
seeking legal advice which suggested that the initial referendum question on which the students voted, could be
considered biased or leading. It asked not one but two questions. The question voted on was “Should AUSA disaffiliate
the ProLife Club and ban any clubs with similar ideology from affiliating in the future?”
A university should be a place of academic freedom and debate, not a place where ideology dictates what ideas may be
expressed. Are we beginning to see evidence in a New Zealand university, of rule by Ochlocracy? Free speech only for
those whose views the majority agree with? If so then New Zealand might be heading towards a dangerous new low as
exemplefied by events recenlty occurring in certain liberal universities in the United States. Here the ‘lunatics are
attempting to run the asylum’. Students there have at times taken over and threatened violence and thrown tantrums,
because they do not agree with the views of (even progressive leaning) staff and in other cases attacking and injuring
staff because they opposed the views of a visiting guest speaker.
A good background to this issue can be gained by viewing this video from the Stuff website. It features interviews with
Jelena Middleton the ProLife Auckland co-president and Auckland Students for Choice spokeswoman Justine Rose, who is
also a member of Campus Feminist Collective.
Right to Life is disappointed that the media overall, were strangely silent regarding this significant assault on the
freedom of speech at the university. While willing to report on the initial expulsion of the Pro-Life group, where was
the coverage in support of freedom of speech? Are the media, with their own liberal bias also complicit in the shut down
of free speech rather than being champions of it?
We must also ask why it is, that so many of the students of New Zealand’s largest university voted to disaffiliate the
Pro-Life group in the first place. 60 percent of the 4,300 students who voted on the above question voted in favour of
the disaffiliation. Have they all been captured by the agenda of death? Why did the members of the pro-abortion group
feel so threatened by the truth about abortion that prompted them to seek this action in the first place? Is it that the
truth that abortion inflicts violence on both women and their defenceless child in the womb to big a threat for them?
The graphic above shows a picture that was apparently offensive to the students. How could anyone could be offended by a
picture of an unborn child in the womb.
Right to Life commends the members of the Prolife Auckland for courageously speaking up at the Auckland University in
defence of women and the lives of unborn children.
Right to Life is not convinced that the AUSA has learnt from this situation and believes that those hostile to the right
to life of our unborn, have only backed down because of a technical problem with the wording in the referendum. Will
they now re-group for another attempt to shut down any opposing views on the campus?
After all this is not the first time that the Pro-Abortion group has pulled this stunt at the university. Hopefully
though it will be the last. Back in 2012 then AUSA President Arena Williams made an announcement saying that the
association would consider whether the “Prolife Club be disaffiliated for propagating harmful misinformation [sic]”.
Any chance that this is just an initial volley in the ‘Hate Speech’ war waged against freedom of expression? Will all
those who fail to bow the knee to the modern day Baals of the ruling cultural paradigm soon be in the cross hairs?
ENDS