Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, spoke at Georgetown University yesterday at the invitation of a student group, an event that was not welcomed by the Washington Archdiocese or the conservative Cardinal Newman Society.
Also displeased with the Catholic school’s welcoming of Richards was Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, who said on a Catholic radio program on Tuesday that inviting Richards was the equivalent of trying to “understand terrorism” by inviting “representatives of ISIS” to campus or inviting “the biggest mobsters to come in because we have to understand both sides of the debate about organized crime.”
In an interview with Teresa Tomeo on Ave Maria Radio’s “Catholic Connection,” Pavone blasted Georgetown for “adding to confusion, contention and division within the church on the most important issue of our day,” asking if there are “no better speakers in the world to stimulate the intellects of these students than people who preside over killing hundreds of thousands of children every year.”
He said he didn’t buy the argument that inviting someone like Richards to speak was allowing “inquiry into all different positions.”
“I mean, do we inquire, do we try to understand terrorism by inviting representatives of ISIS to come and speak?” he asked. “Or let’s get some of the biggest drug dealers in the country to come and talk about their business because, after all, we have to understand both sides of the issue of drug abuse. Why don’t we invite the biggest mobsters to come in because we have to understand both sides of the debate about organized crime? Are they doing that? Maybe I’m missing it, but do these universities invite these kinds of people too?”
“You know,” Tomeo said, “this is what I don’t get, why this issue is only talked about in terms of ‘both sides’ of a controversial issue when it comes to abortion and artificial contraception or even so-called same-sex marriage.”
“Yeah, the fact is the other side of these things is so totally bankrupt, unacceptable, outrageous, and has no place in civilized society that that should be self-evident right from the start,” Pavone responded. “Why do you have to think twice about why it’s wrong to kill a baby? See, that’s what I don’t understand either. I mean, you mean to tell me these students have to think twice about whether killing a child is wrong?”
We’ll just note that conservatives have been wringing their hands for years about intolerant liberals supposedly shutting down opposing speech on college campuses.
