STUDENTS have hit back at claims pro-life groups are "banned" from a Scottish university campus.
The students' association of Strathclyde University (USSA) said there was nothing to prevent the establishment of societies with anti-abortion views.
However, they said such groups were not eligible for USSA funding for activities promoting pro-life choices.
Read more: Pro-life group's fight to reverse ban on funding at Strathclyde University
The intervention came after thousands of people signed an online petition opposing the ban on the funding of pro-life groups at Strathclyde. The petition on the global Christian activism website CitizenGo has already attracted more than 5,000 signatures.
Last month, pro-life students from Strathclyde wrote to the institution asking officials to intervene in a row over their rights to funding after the Student Parliament rejected calls to change the funding policy.
Gary Paterson, the president of USSA, said: "The group in question can’t say they have been rejected from being affiliated to the union because they haven’t applied to join.
"The case that their free speech is under attack is not based in any reality. They are disingenuously conflating society membership and free speech on campus with access to funding in order to generate publicity for their cause. Despite being the leader of the union I have not received any communication from this group.
"If this group want to affiliate to the union, I invite them to apply. If they don’t want to join because they won’t get funding then I ask them to build their case with the members of this union and let the members decide."
Read more: Row over pro-life group's right to funding at Scottish university
Mr Paterson said the union had a long-standing stance against funding activities that ran counter to its equalities policy - including the right of women to have an abortion if they so wished.
However, John Deighan, chief executive officer of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children Scotland, said the student association should be "very aware" the debate at the Student Parliament discussed whether a pro-life group could exist.
He said: "This is available on video and the chairman of the parliament openly states the debate is over whether they should be able to have pro-life societies on campus.
"It was also made clear by the chairman during that debate that the group would not be permitted to join because of the aims of their association. It is a strange logic which upholds that they should not exist and then welcomes their application for affiliation.”
The row comes at a time when there are growing concerns that British universities have become too politically correct and are stifling free speech by banning anything that causes offence.
Last year, the University of East Anglia banned students from wearing free sombreros they were given by a local Tex-Mex restaurant because the student union decided non-Mexicans wearing the wide-brimmed hats could be interpreted as racist.
Oxford University cancelled a debate on abortion after female students complained that they would be offended by the presence of men on the panel.
And Cardiff University students tried to ban the feminist icon Germaine Greer because she once wrote that a man who was castrated would not behave like a woman, which was construed as offensive to transsexuals.
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