Comment As nearly 170 new medical students filed into a University of Michigan auditorium Sunday, some wondered how they would explain to their overjoyed parents that they were leaving the commencement ceremony. Each member of the incoming class had their own calculations about whether to remain seated during the keynote address by Kristin Collier, an openly anti-abortion health care provider, or join fellow students in a peaceful protest. When the day arrived, about 70 people quietly rose from their seats and walked out as Collier took the stage – a show of dissent a month after Roe v. Wade overturned. A clip of the walkout quickly went viral, with one video being viewed more than 15 million times by Tuesday morning. For some conservatives, the walkout was the latest example of “cancellation culture” on college campuses. For others, it was a welcome sign of young people championing a process that has now been severely restricted in some states. But for the students involved, it was an opportunity to support one of the four pillars of medical ethics: autonomy. “We saw an opportunity to use our positions as future doctors to advocate and stand in solidarity with people whose rights to bodily autonomy and medical care are being compromised,” organizers said in a statement to the Washington Post. College shopping students have a new question: Is abortion legal there? A University of Michigan spokesman said in a statement that Collier, the director of the medical school’s health, spirituality and religion program, was chosen to give the keynote address “based on nominations and votes from … medical students, officers and faculty.” Collier, who has taught at the University of Michigan for 17 years, did not respond to a request for comment from The Post. A university spokesman said Collier does not speak to the media. In a June interview with the Catholic newsletter the Pillar, Collier explained her “transformation into a pro-life person” after years of being secular and consistently “over-choice.” A month earlier, she tweeted that she “can’t help but mourn the violence done to my prenatal sisters in the act of abortion, done in the name of autonomy.” In her Sunday address, Collier urged students to “get to know your patients as human beings, not just their scans, labs, chemistry and data.” Although she did not specifically mention abortion, she appeared to address the controversy by saying, “I want to acknowledge the deep wounds that our community has suffered in recent weeks.” “We have a lot of work to do for healing to occur,” he continued. “And I hope that for today, this time, we can focus on what matters most – coming together to support our newly admitted students and their families as we welcome them into one of the greatest professions in this world. Earth”. A student told The Post that after the Dobbs decision, having a speaker who has expressed anti-abortion views “felt inappropriate and a slap in the face”. “He can have any opinion … but I think the professional realm is where you have to be objective, especially as health care providers,” added the student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns about the reaction. on strike. Before during the ceremony, students created a poll to gauge whether they would take action. When about 91 percent of respondents said they were either against or strongly against Collier speaking, according to organizers, they created a petition to have her removed as Main speaker. They also suggested having a conversation with Collier at a later date — just not during a ceremony considered a rite of passage in their field of study. University officials, however, stood by their decision. Collier “never intended to engage in a divisive topic” during the ceremony, the statement said. “The University of Michigan does not revoke an invitation to a speaker based on personal beliefs,” it added. As students prepared for the white coat ceremony, some were planning their protest. They wore pins with abortion rights slogans to the ceremony, recited an additional line about patients’ rights in their declaration of ideals, and then left. “You could tell there was this overwhelming sense of pride in the air. They didn’t know each other before, but there was such a big sigh of relief when everyone came out and were able to stand together in solidarity,” said Brendan Scorpio, a Detroit-based social organizer who attended the ceremony and posted the clip of the walkout . “It was a very important, powerful moment.” The debate surrounding Collier’s speech is preceded by decades of culture clashes on college campuses, said Peter Cajka, who teaches in the American Studies department at the University of Notre Dame. The University of Michigan was known for the student activism it sparked in the 1960s. “These culture war-type discussions in universities erupted in the ’60s as the university became a more political space,” Cajka said. Most recently, students at Boston University walked out of a lecture in April with a conservative political commentator, the school’s newspaper reported. In 2017, graduating seniors at Notre Dame walked out of the commencement ceremony as Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech. Top GOP gubernatorial candidate: Abortion ban should cover rape, incest But Cajka sees a shift in the conflicts happening on college campuses today. Politics is bleeding into fields that have historically been apolitical, such as medicine, technology and science, he said. The catalyst for these protests often comes down to speakers who seem to embody “the politics that people push against at times when politics is said to be an issue.” “Without the Dobbs decision, does this speech matter? No,” he said of Collier’s keynote address. “Because that pro-life person, normally, it’s just an opinion. But now he seems to have or represent some political power.” Michigan is among the few Midwestern states that still protect access to abortion, although the procedure is subject to restrictions. The flagship university and its medical center “remain committed to providing high-quality, safe reproductive care to patients,” the University of Michigan said.
