Adelaide law professor Joanna Howe hopes her “incredibly gruelling fight” to continue her research on abortion will be a blow to cancel culture and a win for free speech. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
This month she won a Fair Work Commission case against her employer, the University of Adelaide, relating to her pro-life advocacy.
Professor Howe said it cost her several months, $100,000 in legal costs, and an “untenable” level of stress to deal with the matter.
She said pro-abortion activists and online trolls regularly attack her on the basis of her Catholic faith but that her advocacy for the unborn is not grounded in religious arguments.
“If I lost my Catholic faith today and became an atheist, I would still be against abortion because every abortion kills an innocent human being,” she said.
“I never make the argument against abortion on Instagram or Facebook using religion. I instead rely on science, philosophy and human rights to explain why abortion is gravely wrong.”
Professor Howe is now pushing for federal protections for free speech and has written to Universities Australia to launch proactive measures at campuses nationwide for dealing with vexatious complaints, in order to protect academic freedom and free speech.
“I don’t think any Australian should face punitive consequences for saying what they think on an issue like abortion, and we should have robust protections to ensure free speech is encouraged and facilitated,” she said.
Professor Howe took the university to the commission when it tried to force her to undertake a course on integrity in research, despite the fact she had been cleared of misconduct in six separate investigations by the university since 2019.
She faced an avalanche of complaints in relation to her pro-life advocacy leading to the university’s investigations, with the last and most serious beginning in January, accusing her of research misconduct.
An independent investigation found that she had not breached the Australian research code in her work scrutinising late-term and sex-selective abortions, and babies born alive after abortion.
FULL STORY
Adelaide academic Joanna Howe wins victory for pro-life advocacy (By Marilyn Rodrigues, The Catholic Weekly)
