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Preying on abortion

Saturday morning. The alarm jerks me awake. A quick breakfast and coffee and I’m off once again to a drab intersection in inner Scarborough to do the Devil’s work – at least in the eyes of the group of “sidewalk counsellors” who are a constant presence outside the abortion clinic where I volunteer as a patient escort.

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My job is to act as a friendly guide past the line of rosary-bedecked religious fanatics: men and women (actually it’s mostly men) brandishing religious idols and gore-filled pamphlets and praying loudly on their knees. “Don’t shred your baby!” they shout to the women going in and out of the clinic.

Some young women, especially if they’re fortified by a couple of girlfriends, react to the approaches with an incredulous laugh. But most push past silently, eyes staring straight ahead, a painful mix of misery, anger and mystification on their faces.

The question is, is all this accosting of those in crisis fair? And is there some way of preserving anti-choicers’ democratic right to free speech while sparing the psyches of those wishing to terminate a pregnancy?

Apparently there is. British Columbia is the only province with a law protecting clinics from protesters, the Access To Abortion Services Act, which mandates a “bubble zone” around them. Thirteen states in the U.S. have similar legislation.

It’s not that the 33 clinics across the country don’t need legal redress a survey by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) shows that 64 per cent are subject to sidewalk protests. Twenty-seven per cent have had to obtain private court injunctions to protect staff and patients.

“Women fought a long battle to win broader access to abortion in this country,” says Carolyn Egan, spokesperson for the Ontario Coalition of Abortion Clinics. She’s part of a group calling for legal imposition of a bubble zone around Ontario clinics.

True, holding on to such a law, when obtained, is a major effort. Protesters convicted under BC’s Access To Abortion Services Act, passed in 1995, have several times challenged its constitutionality, but it was ultimately upheld in 2008 by the province’s Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court of Canada has declined to hear the protesters’ appeal.

According to lawyer Don Crane, who acts for ARCC, “The court concluded that the bubble zone is constitutionally sound it protects the important right of women to unimpeded access to medical services without unduly infringing the pro-life right to free expression.”

Sidewalk counselling is both an insulting and useless gesture. The vast majority of women have already made a firm decision by the time they come to the clinic. Yet I have watched these harassers follow patients down the street, proclaiming that God loves the child in their bodies. They’ve even pursued them into a local fast food restaurant and plunked themselves down at their table.

A couple of times, patients or their male partners have reacted with anger, and I’ve had to quickly intervene to prevent their coming to blows. The police won’t do anything as long as the pro-lifers don’t cross the property line, block sidewalks or physically restrain women.

Even though I profoundly disagree with the pro-lifers, they have a right to organize and proselytize. But what’s going on outside clinics isn’t reasoning it’s intimidation. And besides, if they really cared about motherhood, why wouldn’t they work to improve parental leave laws and access to affordable daycare?

A little spatial leeway would leave pro-lifers free to preach their message and engage in protests against government policy – just like the rest of us. But they would no longer be able to undermine the dignity and privacy of women visiting their doctors. A bubble-zone law would mark the boundary of our society’s sense of common decency.

news@nowtoronto.com

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