Ottawa should stop coddling protesters who break the law

When anti-abortionists harass people, the city is obliged to act, not obfuscate

Abortion is legal in Canada and it is about time the city stopped coddling people who, under the guise of free expression, abuse and intimidate women seeking services at an Ottawa clinic.

For years, apparently, the Morgentaler Clinic has complained about abuse and harassment of staff and clients at the hands of anti-abortion activists, with neither the city nor the police doing much of anything to help.

As is their habit, anti-abortion protesters show up in front of the clinic, carrying placards with grisly images of fetuses, but according to the operators, staff and clients are often subjected to verbal abuse, and worse, spat on.

Police Chief Charles Bordeleau says officers enforce the law when warranted, but must consider the Charter rights of protesters. Fair enough. People who oppose abortion have every right to gather and express their point of view. But what antiabortion activists don’t have is the right to do is harass, abuse and intimidate those who hold different views and are availing themselves of a vital service.

It is difficult to see how yelling and spitting on someone going into a clinic for perfectly legitimate reasons can be deemed free speech. Abortion is very emotional and controversial; the police need to be even-handed in how they deal with the issue. But if they won’t protect the rights of women seeking a medical service and staff going about their legitimate work, who will? These women, rightly, feel abandoned.

The city government appears to want nothing to do with the issue. “Our lawyer said if we were to bring in something specific for (individual protesters), it would be challenged in two minutes,” said Mayor Jim Watson’s response when asked whether the city would consider a bylaw.

But so what? The job of a government is not to cower in fear and wave the white flag of surrender even before the battle starts. The city is supposed to fight for what’s right, and if it has to go to court to defend it, that’s what it should do. Because something is challenged in court doesn’t mean the challenge will succeed.

More important is the legal advice given to the mayor and council. Ottawa is not the first city to face this problem. From British Columbia to Alberta, Quebec and Newfoundland, governments have been in this kind of quandary before and found a way to craft measures to protect abortion clinics that have been upheld by the courts.

What these jurisdictions have done is create “bubble zones” in front of clinics, and within which no protest is allowed. Toronto created such a zone at the city’s Morgentaler Clinic in the wake of its firebombing in 1992, forbidding protesters to come within 500 feet of the clinic. It is a wellestablished tradition at city hall that when a new policy is being considered, staff research what other cities have done to learn from their experience.

The question then is, did the city’s lawyer know of the cases in which the courts upheld restrictions on protests around antiabortion clinics? And why didn’t councillors, as they often do, conduct their own research?

To his credit, Watson has now asked staff for options on how to protect women at abortion clinics. One hopes staff don’t take forever to report back.

“When a woman chooses to access health-care services, she must not be spat on, she must not be yelled at, she must not be followed and intimidated, and she must not be assaulted or harassed,” Coun. Catherine McKenney says.

We should all remember that.

If we were to bring in something specific ... it would be challenged.