Last edited Mon Jul 25, 2022, 01:24 AM - Edit history (1)
We pro-choice people need to push back and loudly defend women’s health and reproductive rights. This is especially true for pro-choice people in healthcare. So part of me wants to thank them for standing up and making a statement.
On the other hand, I am fundamentally opposed to walking out on (or worse, booing/heckling into silence) a speaker because the speaker holds a position that is not your position. It’s childish and rude. And obviously everyone on earth, even my best friend and my mom, holds some positions I find reprehensible.
If I were going to act like these young fools, I would walk out on every speaker who is Christian or Muslim (as those two religions believe in converting and conquering the world, and thus are guilty of centuries of invasion and slavery and mass murder and forced conversions and destruction of cultures, plus they mostly think I am going to hell). And I would walk out every time a speaker is a known Republican (nuff said). And I’d walk out if I know the speaker eats eggs from factory-farm chickens (who are tortured in tiny cages). And I’d walk out on everyone who has voted differently from me on anything significant.
But should we do this: turn our backs and stick our fingers in our ears because the person speaking doesn’t agree with us on Every Single Thing?
If you think pro-choice students are noble for walking out on a prolifer, then you must accept that this ostentatious rejection can be done by anyone to anyone. Expect that all the pro-life students will walk out if there is an openly pro-choice speaker. All the non-Christians will walk out on the speaker who happens to be Christian - and then all the Christian students will walk out when a known atheist steps to the podium. When a speaker is a known Trump supporter, half the audience will ostentatiously walk out - and when the next speaker is a known Biden supporter, they willl return but the other half the audience will walk out.
What a comically stupid and horrible way to behave toward each other.
Fact: some people really believe that there’s a soul in every fertilized egg; that every fetus is already a person and that abortion is murder and is therefore wrong. I don’t happen to agree with those people. Politically, I fight them, and on my own time I am actively helping pregnant women access abortions. But that doesn’t mean I think all pro-lifers are by definition hateful or evil - just like I don’t think most Christians or Muslims or Republicans are by definition hateful or evil. They are just people with beliefs different from my beliefs. People who have different beliefs from me don’t deserve my hatred or rudeness.
Med students are generally young and young people are into performative “protests.” I guess when I was 22 I too would have been excited to join with my friends in publicly walking out on a speaker I disagreed with. I would have felt daring and noble and Part Of Something. But I don’t think that way anymore.
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