Time to welcome the pro-lifers

Whether pro-life, pro-choice, or on the fence – let’s embrace the plurality of views, says Jacob Diamond.

Freshers’ week is almost upon us and as Roar! has been so speedy to inform you, yet another society has found its way on to King’s campuses…. The pro-lifers have come (cue exaggerated eye-roll)!

What a rollercoaster of a time freshers will have signing to that society’s mailing list and enduring that inevitable boat-load of pro-life propaganda in their inboxes the next day.

Yet instead of doing the usual, and adolescently indulge myself in my own brand of militant atheism, or logics as it’s also known, I am instead beginning to think that proliferating pro-lifery may not be such a bad thing after all.

Why? What I bemoan more than a stupid view is an unchallenged one. The student version of pro-choice is speedily becoming the latter. The student population stereotypically assumes issues like abortion have an easy answer and are clearly well resolved on the pro-choice side of the argument. A plurality of views should be promoted rather than suppressed, as KCLSU seems to be tending towards.

The argument boils down to disagreement as to when a foetus is worthy of personhood – an ethical problem that inevitably results in arbitrary opinions. But of course neither side of the debate will see it that way. Certainly the rhetoric from both sides is extraordinarily self-assured.

So when I hear that our own students’ union tries to pass a motion to “actively condemn any pro-life movements that may operate on campus”, I uncomfortably anticipate I may have to start being more active in student politics.

I would usually admit to being pro-choice. I would now say I have pro-choice instincts, so for me it is weird to find myself being pushed over to the other side of the fence by a movement I once credited with the intellectual and moral upper-hand. It is very important to recognise that any conclusion on the issue of abortion is utterly subjective and uncertain.

I pride myself on having a bold, controversial opinion about most things so sitting on the fence in this case has been rather uncomfortable. And so it should be. Ultra-scepticism is uncomfortable, but with issues as subjective as these, you can find some reassurance in the knowledge that you now occupy the intellectually superior position.

Let’s just hope this new society is up to generating the debate!