Notre Dame refuses to sponsor pro-life event, hosts pro-abortion event same night

The University of Notre Dame, a Catholic educational institution, refused their support for a pro-life event — yet hosted a pro-abortion event on the same night. Writing for the Irish Rover, Mary Frances Myler explained that Right to Life Michiana held an event celebrating 50 years of fighting for life at an annual benefit on October 27.

For over a decade, Notre Dame has sponsored the event — until this year.

“This year, a university administrator decided that Right to Life Michiana’s invited speaker transgressed the bounds of acceptable pro-life discourse,” Myler said. “Ben Shapiro needs no introduction, and my purpose in writing is not to defend him. But the university, worried that association with Shapiro would sully her good name, opted not to participate in this year’s pro-life benefit. They did not pass go, they did not give $200 — let alone their usual sum.”

In addition to refusing to sponsor the event, the university also banned any university-affiliated groups from purchasing tickets or donating to the benefit.

URGENT: For every dollar given, 34 more people can be reached with the truth about abortion. Will you join us in this life-saving work as a monthly donor today?

“The Student Activities Office (SAO) had already approved Notre Dame Right to Life’s (NDRtL) purchase of tickets for the benefit when NDRtL president Merlot Fogarty received a phone call from an SAO employee who informed her that the club would not be able to attend the event,” Myler wrote. “He did not explain the university’s reasoning. Confused by the unexpected reversal, Fogarty sought clarity from university administrators. On September 8, she and several other NDRtL club members met with Chuck Lamphier, the Executive Director of the Office of Mission Engagement and Church Affairs and the administrator responsible for the university’s decision not to donate to the benefit.”

Lamphier merely said the event and speaker were “problematic.”

Yet the same night, Myler noted, “[t]he Gender Studies Program and the Institute on Race and Resilience co-sponsored a community teach-in by ‘reproductive care advocates’ at the Civil Rights Heritage Center called ‘Post-Roe America: Making Intersectional Feminist Sense of Abortion Bans.'”

One panelist, Sharon Lau, is the regional advocacy director for abortion chain Whole Woman’s Health, and previously worked for Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation. Maureen Bauer is an outspoken abortion advocate, and Eli Williams has volunteered at abortion facilities.

The controversial move from the Catholic university comes on the heels of another controversy involving a professor who was found to have offered to help students obtain illegal abortions.