Women have the right to safe abortions, but anti-abortion activists have rights, too

Everyone has the right to protest. But how close is too close?

I’d say that being close enough to spit on the person whose actions you despise is probably too close. But beyond that, it’s open to debate.

After a couple entering an abortion clinic in Ottawa were spit upon last summer by antiabortion protesters, the government got ready to create a “safe zone” around those clinics and other places that facilitate legal abortion.

Proposed legislation would require right-to-life protesters — who see abortions as murder — to stand at least 50 metres away from abortion clinics.

Other places such as medical clinics, doctors’ offices or hospitals could apply for a safe zone too. The distance observed by protesters could be increased as far as 150 metres.

Lyndsey Butcher, executive director of the SHORE Centre in Kitchener, is pleased about these plans for legislation.

Right now, she said, there are no legal protections for women seeking abortions or minimum distances that protesters must observe.

Women seeking abortions locally are going to the Freeport Hospital.

They see the protesters across the street from the hospital’s entrance, and “are vulnerable to feeling they are being shamed and judged,” she said.

“It’s quite upsetting to them that strangers are judging them.”

The bill would also prevent video or photos being taken of women seeking abortions and the health-care workers who help them.

And it would allow for similar “safe zones” to be placed around the homes and offices of health care professionals who fear being picketed if they help women end their pregnancies. I’m torn about this issue. Abortions are legal in Canada with no restrictions whatsoever. People need to be able to access public services without being restricted, whether that’s a person on a wheelchair trying to get on a bus, or a woman going to a clinic for an abortion.

But if some people don’t agree with what you are doing, and all they do is say so, is that really stopping you from exercising your legal rights?

We judge one another every day, after all. We might yell expletives at a driver going too fast. We might look askance at someone covered in tattoos.

Locally, the right-to-life activists who have assembled across the street from Freeport have “carried non-confrontational signs,” said right-to-life organizer Camilla Gunnarsson in a letter to this newspaper several months ago.

(She could not be reached Friday for an update.)

In 10 years of protest, the prolife activists have not been involved in a single incident of intimidation or harassment, she said in her letter.

I don’t have to agree with the right-to-lifers to believe that they have every right to speak up peacefully. Where would social movements be, if it wasn’t for marches, protests and all kinds of political activism?

You can’t be OK only with the activism you agree with.

Of course organizations or people with a history of violence should be kept away.

But for groups that are peacefully expressing their concern with a deeply controversial situation (Canada is one of a very few countries in the world where abortion isn’t regulated at all), I think it renders their protest meaningless to move them 150 metres from the place they’re concerned about.

No one can spit that far.