Students for Choice was formed in 1999 to fight the Genocide Awareness Project at UBC. Since then, however, the group has developed a larger mandate to educate students about reproductive freedom and to do feminist organizing on and off campus.
We have learned how to deal with the media, how to throw together a demonstration in less than a day, how to organize on no budget at all against an organization with seemingly bottomless pockets. We have created an email listserve with four hundred members. We have had tables and speakers at community events like Rock for Choice and International Women's Day, and we have spent endless hours gathering signatures on letters of protest, making posters, banners, and leaflets, making phone calls, sending emails, and holding up banners and picket signs.
Students for Choice members have been faced with student disciplinary action and a civil suit, threatened with defamation suits, and received death threats. It has often been difficult, and many of us have cried a great deal in frustration, anger, and sadness. But we have also had many students, faculty and staff thank us for the work we do.
In many ways, Lifeline's mission has backfired. Instead of turning pro-choice or uncertain students into anti-choice ones, their display has made many of us into feminist activists.
Please click on the school year you would like to browse.
Erin's story
1999/2000
2000/2001
2001/2002
2002/2003
Erin's Story
It all started in August 1999.
Erin Kaiser was browsing the AMS (our student union) website when she came across a site for the Lifeline club, an anti-choice campus group. She decided to pose as Mary Jane O'Keefe, a Baptist first-year student from Red Deer, Alberta, and sign up for Lifeline's email list, as well as attend Lifeline meetings. This was how she first discovered that Lifeline was planning to invite the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) to set up the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) at UBC. To try to prevent GAP from coming to UBC, she put up posters for a meeting, at which an ad hoc group called Students for Choice was formed. Students for Choice made links with other campus groups, including the Jewish Students Association, Colour Connected Against Racism, Medical Students for Choice, and various political clubs, as well as off-campus groups like the Pro-Choice Action Network (ProCAN). Erin spent the next couple of weeks attempting to intervene in negotiations between the university and the CBR, but UBC refused to tell her what was going on. All her information came from Lifeline (she was still posing as Mary Jane O'Keefe).
One day in November of the same year, we were horrified to find that Lifeline had set up what they call "baby-GAP," a smaller version of the same display, at the Goddess of Democracy. The Goddess is a memorial to the students killed in pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in the People's Republic of China, and Lifeline happily appropriated it as a symbol of free speech - that is, their freedom to set up GAP wherever they pleased. Students had no warning that GAP was going to be on campus that day.
Erin arrived early in the morning to go to work. A couple of hours into her shift at the campus pizza shop, a friend came in to tell her that GAP was there.
Erin became extremely upset. She believed Lifeline had set up GAP without the university's permission, because she had attended meetings with Campus Security at which they had been very helpful in providing her with possible dates and locations for the display, and had not mentioned this one. She was also furious that Students for Choice would have no time to organize any kind of demonstration. Erin is not only Jewish, but had had an abortion a short time before. It seemed horribly wrong that someone in her situation would have to see the display without anyone there to provide support, resources or any kind of pro-choice message. She also felt trapped, because the display had been set up right outside the building where she worked.
After her shift, she and two other students alerted the student press to what they were going to do. They went outside and confronted Lifeline directly. Followed by a reporter from the Ubyssey, they turned over tables, ripped up the display, and took as much anti-choice literature as they could (which they later destroyed), but were careful not to touch anyone associated with the display. Other students came to support them, and watched as they did this. Erin then went to the Equity Office and asked for a complaint form, filled it out, and was promptly told that they would under no circumstances consider her complaint. When she realized that the RCMP had been called and were looking for her, Erin broke down entirely and spent the rest of the day in counselling at the Women Students Office.
The RCMP interviewed her the next day, and told her they would not press charges under any circumstances. They told her that the university was considering discipline against her. Two months later, she and I were in Israel together for ten days. Upon our return (on a Sunday), we were told that GAP would be on campus again on the following Wednesday. At an emergency Students for Choice meeting the next day, Erin was served with an injunction notice against any rally on the Wednesday. A court date was set for 8 am the morning of the display, at which we could argue our case. Erin went alone to the courthouse, where she had the injunction overturned. Students for Choice held a rally of about 500 people directly across from the GAP display.
The next month or so was spent dealing with discipline proceedings against Erin, Jon and Lesley. Eventually, the three were suspended for a year, after which they would have to reapply to UBC, and were told that there would be a permanent notation of violent misconduct on their transcripts. Upon appeal, the notation was replaced with a temporary notation of "student misconduct," the suspension was reduced to a semester, and Lesley was allowed to graduate from the School of Social Work.
Top of page
1999/2000
Many of our current members first encountered Students for Choice at a demonstration against GAP in September 1999 on the day that GAP was expected to arrive on campus. GAP did not arrive, because CBR had objected to the security restrictions that UBC had attempted to impose on them in their contract with the university. CBR refused to set up in a location that was not absolutely central to the campus community; they refused to set up a security fence around the display; and they refused to pay a security deposit.
Pro-choice activism at UBC had also started to worry the university; they began to be concerned about a backlash. Delighted that GAP wasn't there, students nonetheless protested the university's willingness to let GAP set up on campus at all, and asserted that UBC was and should be an anti-racist, pro-choice campus where hatred was always unwelcome.
During the summer of 2000, Erin Kaiser and Hannah Roman wrote a "Guide for Campus Activists" with the help of Joyce Arthur of ProCAN. The Canadian Federation of Students helped with photocopying, and we distributed it to as many university feminist and pro-choice organizations as we could. The activist's guide has since found its way as far as Arizona, Michigan, and Washington, DC. An updated copy is available under our "Handbook" section.
That summer also saw the stabbing of Dr. Garson Romalis, a Vancouver abortion provider who was shot by a sniper in 1994. Erin, Joyce, and other ProCAN members organized a rally in support of Dr. Romalis the day of the stabbing.
Top of page
2000/2001
For a year, we had been attempting to contact members of the university administration to convince them that GAP should not be allowed on campus, but they consistently refused to meet with us. In the fall, Students for Choice realized that Lifeline was determined to bring "baby-GAP" to campus as much as they possibly could.
We decided to try something new. We had heard of other campus groups in the States using "shrouds" to block the display from the view of passersby, forcing them to walk between the shroud and the display in order to view it. This appealed to us, because it emphasized our point, which is that students, staff and faculty should not have to view such a disturbing and graphic display if they do not choose to do so. Putting up "shrouds" would give people a choice about whether or not they wished to look at the GAP display.
Having mentioned our plan to the media, we received a letter (addressed to "Dear Sirs"!) from Lifeline's lawyer, Craig Jones of the BC Civil Liberties Association and Bull, Housser and Tupper, a Vancouver law firm. The letter, written on Bull, Housser and Tupper letterhead, threatened us with a lawsuit for "exemplary and punitive damages" if we "shrouded [their] clients' display so that it [could not] be freely seen by persons who may wish to view it from a distance." It also threatened us with a lawsuit if we made "defamatory statements."
How can an organization that insists on its right to "free speech" no matter what make such vague threats about "defamation" in a clear attempt to scare us into silence? As one BCCLA member wrote when resigning his membership to the organization in protest, "Currently the greatest legal impediment to free speech and lawful assembly in Canada is the threat of legal action. Well-funded organizations can, and do, intimidate individuals and volunteer groups whose funds are limited or non-existent."
We went ahead, holding another rally to publicize the fact that GAP was coming several days before the display was to be put up, with speakers from campus groups, ProCAN, and Libby Davies, the MP for Vancouver-East. On the day of the display, we were informed that Lifeline had negotiated agreements that allowed the university to restrict the size, frequency and location of the GAP displays. This meant that their displays, which were put up in a central location next to the Student Union Building, had the university's sanction. We were therefore not allowed to protest within about 20 feet of the display. The two banners that we had created, which simply read "CHOICE," were relatively ineffective in blocking the display when we were forced to stand so far away.
The next time GAP came, we were ready with 24 handmade banners, each of which bore the name and logo of a supportive organization and the word "CHOICE." Club members and supportive students and staff took turns holding up the banners in front of the display from 8 am until 4 pm. The display was still visible, because we were forced to stand twenty feet away, and people could pass between the banners and the display. But the banners offer an effective counter-message, and enable people to pass by the display without being confronted with its horrific and hateful images if they choose. We have also been able to bring the banners to Simon Fraser University, where a campus anti-choice organization has set up baby-GAP twice, and to an annual anti-choice protest called LifeChain.
Top of page
2001/2002
This year was marked by Lifeline becoming bolder and consistently disobeying University policy. Unannounced, the group would walk around UBC campus without notifying security first, carrying their massive posters. Lifeline ducked under University rules by claiming their display was a "moving" display Ð no one can get in trouble for walking around campus 'transporting' a sign. As long as the group moved around, propping up their graphic photos so they could be clearly seen, the University refused to take any action. Various Students For Choice members stumbled upon these displays and scrambled to throw together a protest. Lifeline made a lot of noise about their right to free speech but didn't seem nearly as enthusiastic about free speech when it involved Students For Choice speaking out! (The "free speech" battle cry is, and has always been, a farce designed to appeal to the crowds who might not be informed about abortion but who are certainly going to support free speech.) Instead of trying to inform and educate their audience, Lifeline utilised propaganda tactics to frighten, disgust, and enrage passers-by.
The reason Lifeline should inform the University became apparent when an elementary school class walked by one of the unannounced displays. The children and teachers in the group had no warning about the signs and there were no shrouds to shield the graphic images from the eyes of the young kids. Even the most extreme of the anti-choice groups balks at horrifying children to make their point, but Lifeline, it seemed, had few such scruples. Children aside, we as a group had already seen the effects of the display on women, first nations students, black students, and Jewish students who were actually educated about the Holocaust. Lifeline seemed adamant that their "message" was worth the mental anguish of men, women and children who have actual connection to the genocides Lifeline so gleefully manipulates.
When attempting to talk to the University regarding these blatant trespasses, we were met with silence or wild goose chases. Meanwhile, Lifeline vowed to show up with the baby g.a.p. as much as possible to protest the University's "unfair policy" which stated the g.a.p. was only allowed on campus twice a year. Strangely enough, the University had not enforced that rule and yet Lifeline saw fit to react to it Ð just another excuse to hold "moving displays".
Top of page
2002/2003
While we are frustrated and infuriated by the university's willingness to allow Lifeline to display GAP repeatedly every year, we continue to do whatever we can to offer effective opposition to their message that abortion is genocide. There is always a great deal of work to be done. We continue to network with feminist organizations at other universities, and with the pro-choice community here in Vancouver. And whenever the display is set up at UBC, we are there with our banners, reminding Lifeline, the university, and other students that reproductive freedom is a human right that can never be taken from us.
Top of page