On Sunday, incoming medical students participated in a White Coat Ceremony, "one of the medical school’s grandest traditions" during which incoming students receive their first white coat, marking their entry into medicine. But when pro-life Dr. Kristin Collier, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan (UM), took the stage as the featured speaker, about half of the students quietly stood up, turned around, and left the room.
"It's a little ironic that the students walked out right after they took an oath to do no harm," responds Anna Visser of Right to Life Michigan. "They walked out right as Dr. Kristin, who is pro-life, was making a speech and congratulating them on receiving their white coats."
Newsweek notes that Dr. Collier started her career as a pro-abortion atheist but later became a "committed Christian and avowedly pro-life" activist. Now director of the UM Medical School Program on Health Spirituality & Religion, she has made her position for life known on social media.
"Holding on to a view of feminism where one fights for the rights of all women and girls, especially those who are most vulnerable. I can't not lament the violence directed at my prenatal sisters in the act of abortion, done in the name of autonomy," she tweeted on May 2022, later comparing abortion to "oppression."
Ahead of the ceremony, more than 340 medical students and 72 community members -- including University of Michigan Medicine's residents, physicians, graduate students, and alumni -- had signed a petition opposing the choice of Dr. Collier as the event's keynote speaker. The university, however, determined that it could not "revoke an invitation to a speaker based on their personal beliefs" – beliefs that Dr. Collier never even mentioned in her speech at the ceremony.
"The University of Michigan has come out and said [it] will continue to support abortion and perform abortions, and so it was still nice to see that about half of the crowd, half of the students stayed to listen to the speaker, gave her the respect she deserved," Visser tells AFN.
She reiterates that the medical students took an oath to "do no harm" and adds that abortion fatally harms babies.
Dr. Collier is not the only pro-life person on staff at the university. Jim Harbaugh, head football coach for the University of Michigan Wolverines, recently spoke at the Plymouth Right to Life dinner, where he told those in attendance that for him, "the right choice is to have the courage to let the unborn be born."
