“We are glad that the College of St. Scholastica recognized the error of their ways and removed links to Planned Parenthood from the university website. All Catholic universities should stand for the sanctity of human life,” noted Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action.
DULUTH, MN and FREDERICKSBURG, VA (3-30-2020)–
Reacting to news that the College of St. Scholastica, a Catholic university in Minnesota, removed links to Planned Parenthood on its website, Kristan Hawkins stated, “Catholic universities must always lead on educating their students to respect the sanctity of human life. We are thankful that the College of St. Scholastica quickly moved to fix their website and has agreed to consider placing life-affirming resources on the website instead. Students for Life at College of St. Scholastica should feel proud for ensuring their university is authentically Catholic.”
Students for Life at College of St. Scholastica, working with Students for Life Action National Field Director Katie Lodjic, requested that their school remove several links to Planned Parenthood from the school website.
The school’s website had listed the resources under a “Sexual Health Resources” tab on the college’s website. The PDFs are no longer accessible on the school’s website.
Camille Cisneros, the Supportive Services Coordinator for Students for Life of America sent in multiple life-affirming resources for the school to post instead, including Pregnant on Campus and local pregnancy help organizations.
The students sent in a letter on February 12th, and on February 13th the university responded and the students were able to set up a meeting with campus ministry and the Violence and Prevention Coordinator in February 20th. The school removed the links that week.
Lodjic stated, “Catholic universities should be put on notice that they cannot be promoting abortion on their website. We will continue to send out letters and pressure universities to stop promoting abortion and Planned Parenthood. We also hope that the school will post the life-affirming resources we shared with them.”
You can read more about our similar victory at Seattle University here.
Students for Life Action Executive Director Matt Lamb wrote an op-ed about the role Catholic universities play in ending abortion. You can read that here.
For interviews, contact Kristi Hamrick at khamrick@studentsforlife.org.
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Students for Life of America is the nation’s largest, pro-life, youth organization. Headquartered in Fredericksburg, VA, SFLA serves more than 1,250 groups on college, universities, high school and middle school campuses in all 50 states.
