Should people with anti-abortion views be allowed to participate in the forthcoming Northern Ireland Human Rights Festival? The Belfast Feminist Network (BFN) says no.
It claims that a discussion hosted by the Both Lives Matter campaign, which will include a talk on abortion law by Brett Lockhart QC on Monday afternoon, “promotes the criminalisation of women who have abortions, which directly conflicts with international human rights standards”. The BFN’s representative, Liz Nelson, has resigned as chair of the festival’s organising committee after the committee decided, by majority verdict, to go ahead with the Both Lives Matter event.
What a shamefully illiberal and counter-productive own goal. You do not advance the cause of reproductive rights – or, indeed, any other kind of rights – one iota by seeking to silence your opponents.
This failed attempt at no-platforming Both Lives Matter seems particularly ironic, given that the whole point of the Human Rights Festival is “to increase discussion and engagement about human rights in Northern Ireland” by creating “a space for different arguments and positions on human rights issues to be set out and considered, even on the most contested subjects”.
Perhaps the Belfast Feminist Network, by resigning the chair of the festival’s board, aimed to take a stand against current law in Northern Ireland, where termination of pregnancy is only allowed if a woman’s life is at risk or there is a permanent or serious risk to her physical or mental health. If so, it hasn’t worked.
Instead, the BFN looks like petty-minded censors, flouncing off in a huff when they didn’t get their way. They made the Both Lives Matter campaign – who stated that “we believe discussion and persuasion provide a better path than ‘no platforming’ and silencing those we disagree with” – appear to be the tolerant, reasonable camp rather than the ones who want to maintain the current violation of women’s reproductive rights. Hence the BFN’s own goal.
Accessing legal abortion
To be perfectly clear, I am pro-choice all the way. I believe passionately that any woman in Ireland, North or South, should be able to access a safe, legal abortion if she needs one. But this is not the way to achieve it.
Consider that the festival is intended for the general public. Its fundamental aim is to get people involved and thinking about controversial issues, working out what their own positions are. So the obvious thing for pro-choice activists to do is get stuck in there, in full public view, and defeat their opponents with the force of reasoned argument, backed up by the considerable weight of international human rights standards.
Confront the anti-abortion campaigners, challenge them, expose the gaps in their logic, call them out on the pious, misogynistic authoritarianism that so often lurks behind the pro-life rhetoric of care and compassion. Tell them what bodily autonomy means, and why it’s vitally important. Make a superbly convincing case, then step back and let audience members make up their own minds.
Attempting to censor those with whom you disagree is not simply an offence against the most fundamental right of all, from which all others flow: the right to free speech. Such a retrograde action also implies that you don’t trust people to draw their own conclusions after hearing both sides of the argument. It suggests that you have insufficient faith in your stated position – or, worse, that you secretly fear that the other side is more persuasive.
Festival no-go area
Kellie Turtle, one of the founders of the Belfast Feminist Network, said that “a human rights festival is not a place to promote anti-human rights ideas”. She believes that the festival should be a no-go area for people who argue for the present law in Northern Ireland to be maintained: “Many women in our group have said that you would think that the one place you wouldn’t have to encounter the forced birth movement is in a human rights festival.”
But surely that’s the ideal arena to counter anti-abortion voices and to make the overwhelming case for the right to choose. What do Turtle and her associates want, to sit in a nice cosy huddle agreeing with each other? That won’t get us very far.
A public forum, such as the Northern Ireland Human Rights Festival, should not be a ‘safe space’ where only approved views may be expressed. Let everyone speak, let everyone have their say. You don’t win arguments – and you certainly don’t generate popular support – by trying to exclude your opponents, or by walking away from debate.