Michigan Medical School Students Walk out on Pro-Life Speaker During White Coat Ceremony

Dozens of incoming medical students at the University of Michigan walked out of the initiation ceremony on Sunday, following a failed attempt to pressure the school to cancel a pro-life doctor as the ceremony’s keynote speaker.

The July 24 ceremony, during which students received their medical white coats and took the White Coat Pledge and the Hippocratic Oath, featured a speech by Dr. Kristin Collier, a professor and vocal critic of abortion.

“I want to acknowledge the deep wounds our community has suffered over the past several weeks,” said Collier as she began her speech, apparently referencing the pro-abortion students’ frustration with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“We have a great deal of work to do for healing to occur,” the professor continued. “I hope that for today, for this time, we can focus on what matters most: coming together to support our newly accepted students and their families with the goal of welcoming them into one of the greatest vocations that exist on this earth.”

Not all students stayed to hear her message. Dozens of them, along with their parents, walked out of the auditorium as soon as Collier was introduced.

According to an interview with online publication The Pillar, Collier started as a “pro-choice atheist” but later converted to Christianity and eventually reversed her view on abortion. She now directs a UMich program on religion, spirituality, and medicine and explores in her academic work how religious beliefs or spiritual commitments inform a physician’s practices.

Pro-abortion Students ‘Scared’

The selection of Collier as the keynote speaker for the White Coat Ceremony “triggered” pro-abortion students on UMich campus. They demanded the medical school find an alternative speaker, saying that the mere fact that Collier was given a platform to speak “scared” them.

In a petition, UMich

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