Students at Catholic Georgetown feel 'unsafe' by pro-life speakers in optional, virtual event

Pro-abortion students at Georgetown University demanded the Catholic school condemn pro-life speakers at the recent Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life, an annual event organized by students at the nation’s oldest Catholic institution of higher education. The conference, which bills itself as “the largest student-run, pro-life conference in the nation,” has been held at Georgetown for more than two decades.

H*yas for Choice, an organization of Georgetown students that is not formally affiliated with, or supported by, the university, submitted a petition to the school’s administration with signatures from more than 600 members of the campus community.

The petition calls out Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is scheduled to participate in a panel discussion, for her opposition to same-sex marriage – as well as her support for former President Donald Trump and her criticism of the Black Lives Matter organization. The petition also opposes Valerie Huber, another speaker and former HHS official, because she worked for the Trump administration and has supported abstinence-only sex education.

Sister Deirdre “DeDe” Byrne, a Catholic nun and an accomplished physician, is also addressed in the petition not just for her pro-life views, but for her support of Trump and her speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

H*yas for Choice and their allies are asking the university’s administrators to issue a campus-wide email “explicitly condemning the unjust, appalling actions of Cardinal O’Connor,” as well as “the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic rhetoric of the keynote speaker and panelists.”