Last week, Ontario passed the Safe Access to Abortion Services Act, which increases the safe access zone around abortion clinics. While the bill does not ban protests, it allows people needing to access the clinic the ability to do so without verbal or physical harassment.
Although abortion is accessible in the province, clinics in Ottawa have seen instances of harassment outside the clinics by protesters. Anyone walking along Bank Street near downtown may have seen the regular protester outside the Morgentaler Clinic with signs depicting graphic images of fetuses and a severed baby doll head around his neck.
Amidst the passing of the bill, there are cries from pro-life groups declaring that the law denies them their freedom of speech. This is not true. The bubble zone does not stop pro-lifers from protesting, but it does ensure the safety of those who need to access the clinic. The Act means that those seeking abortion are able to do so without any fear of harassment or encroachment on their safety. The right to bodily autonomy without threat to one’s personal safety trumps the right of a group to protest their own views.
The argument that the violent actions of a few protestors should not take away the voice of the pro-life movement is skewed because it ironically disregards the threat the pro-life ideology has to human life.
Regardless of whether the protestor outside the Morgentaler Clinic is affiliated with the March for Life—the annual pro-life rally on Parliament Hill—or not, he still shares in the ideology that people should not have autonomy over their own bodies.
The pro-life movement is centered around the belief that ‘human life is given to us by God.’ However, by attempting to restrict other people’s access to abortion, it foists their own beliefs upon others. Movements based in religion hold little merit, because those ideas cannot be applied to every single person in society.
Pro-choice gives each individual person the choice of whether or not they would get an abortion, and gives that option to them regardless of whether or not they personally would get an abortion. When pro-life movements attempt to ban abortion completely, they dictate the lives of others.
What pro-life protesters outside abortion clinics or at the March for Life need to realize is that even if abortion is banned, people will still attempt to access it. From coat hangers to castor oil, abortion being illegal has never stopped people from getting them. Banning abortion only endangers the lives of those trying to get them, and that isn’t very pro-life of the movement.
An abortion clinic does not encourage people to get abortions instead of considering other alternatives, but it does provide the option to those who need it for a financial, health, or any other personal reason. Rather than run the risk of people endangering their lives to get an abortion, clinics provide a safe option while also giving support and advice to those who need it.
These laws already exist in British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador, so Ontario is just the next step in increasing freedom of choice.
