Anti-abortion protest law bogged down by politics

A new law creating anti-protest bubble zones around Ontario abortion clinics and the people who work in them should be in place within a couple of weeks, says Attorney General Yasir Naqvi, though it’s still inching through Queen’s Park.

All three major parties at Queen’s Park agree the law is needed. Debating it Monday afternoon, they disagreed on why, and disputed each other’s motives for supporting the bill that they all support.

For the Liberals, the Protecting a Woman’s Right to Access Abortion Services Act is about a woman’s right to seek an abortion in safety.

“This is about protecting women’s health,” said Naqvi. “I’m confident that no member of this house … would jeopardize that by engaging in any political manoeuvring.”

He wants to pass the bill but after a due period of study.

For Progressive Conservatives, the issue is protecting women from harassment outside abortion clinics but that’s only one venue where women are intimidated and sometimes assaulted.

Nepean-Carleton Tory MPP Lisa MacLeod wanted to pass the bill into law quickly, exactly as it is.

She defended conservatives’ record on women’s issues dating back decades and said she resented the Liberals’ desire to divide the PCs with a bill touching on abortion.

“We’re basically used as pawns in a political game,” MacLeod said.

For New Democrats, the bill is part of a much bigger fight to promote women’s equality, said London New Democrat Peggy Sattler. That should include easier access to abortions, to health care, to child care and to equal pay for equal work. She thought the Liberals got that, she said. Then the government sabotaged the quick passage of its own bill.

“They voted against protecting women from being harassed, from being spit on, from being intimidated,” Sattler said.

You’ll recall how we got here. Last spring, workers at Ottawa’s Morgentaler Clinic on Bank Street downtown, in Naqvi’s Ottawa Centre riding, began complaining about aggressive protests outside their door.

Protests featuring a small number of demonstrators aren’t quite captured by bylaws meant to cover larger demonstrations and unless the city posted police outside the clinic constantly, which it refused to do, prosecuting harassment and even actual assaults is difficult. So Coun. Catherine McKenney and Mayor Jim Watson asked the provincial government to change its laws.

In May Naqvi promised to impose “bubble zones” outside abortion clinics where anti-abortion protests would be prohibited.

His ministry spent the summer crafting the law and he revealed it two weeks ago: 50-metre bubble zones around premises where abortions are carried out, plus similar zones around the homes of the people who work in them and personally around the staff, wherever they happen to be.

Protecting “women’s right to choose” is literally the most important thing to him, to Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberal government, he said at the time.

Then he refused help from the opposition to enact this protection quickly, to jam up PC leader Patrick Brown by drawing out the discussion.

“It’s important that people understand who they’re voting for, the values of the people they’re voting for,” said Deb Matthews, the deputy premier, in Monday’s debate.

But slowing down their own bill, while claiming the moral high ground, was a really bad look. So Naqvi has made a deal with the opposition to move the bubble-zone bill quickly, but not too quickly.

That deal has not yet actually come to a vote, however. Just before the bill seemed likely to pass its second of three readings after all the MPPs had had their say Monday, the Liberals pushed the vote into Tuesday.

At some point, maybe, women will get the protection from intimidation all these politicians insist they need.