BREAKING: Johns Hopkins grants rights to student pro-life group
The Thomas More Law Center has announced that the Student Government Association Judiciary Committee of Johns Hopkins University issued a unanimous decision last night overturning an SGA ruling of March 24 that denied recognition to Voice for Life as an official student club of the school.
Background, via World magazine:
Voice for Life, an official pro-life student group from 1995 to 2010, sought re-recognition from the Johns Hopkins SGA.
According to the SGA meeting’s minutes, VFL seeks to “inform people about pro-life [options] and help women in Baltimore, [and] also [conduct] sidewalk counseling,” which includes “advocates, signs, literature, etc., outside abortion clinics.”
GA denied the group’s request because it was concerned that sidewalk counseling made people “feel uncomfortable” about killing unborn babies. The SGA said VFL is “anti-abortion,” not pro-life.
According to LifeNews.com, SGA leaders objected to VFL because of links on its webpage to Center for Bio-Ethical Reform photos depicting abortion, because CBR brought graphic pictures to a campus near JHU last year, and because of VFL’s plan to protest at a local abortion clinic amounted to “harrassment.”
An SGA executive member went further, according to LN, by equating VFL with a white supremacist group.
TMLC sent a letter to JHU and SGA officials on April 4 “laying out the legal basis requiring recognition of VFL,” adding:
Richard Thompson, TMLC’s President and Chief Counsel, commented: “This is a great example of courageous students facing tremendous opposition, sticking to their deeply held pro-life principles and advancing those principles based on their right to free speech so deeply engrained in our culture, enshrined in our constitution, and fostered at Johns Hopkins University.”
Hear hear. Pictured right (click to enlarge) are VFL leaders Andrew Guernsey, an JHU freshman, and Chris Fernandez, a senior. Kudos to both.
Here’s Students for Life of America’s press statement on the great news.
[Photo via Baltimore Sun]

It’s good to see these courageous pro-life students vindicated in the face of the slander against them and the violation of their free speech rights.
Surely the SGA of JHU has better things to do on behalf of the students than to accuse those trying to exercise free speech of being like white supremacists.
Lol, you found a new ‘Breaking News’ image. That other one was kind of blurry, was it not?
Wow, I’m amazed that this post didn’t get more comments. Congratulations to Voice for Life!
Good work Young People. You are the prolife generation!