Tag Archives: abortion

“My Body, My Choice”? http://cafe.nfshost.com/?p=6683

Posted on by

THRONE, ALTAR, LIBERTY

THE CANADIAN RED ENSIGN

The Canadian Red Ensign

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2021

“My Body, My Choice”?

The slogan “my body, my choice” is not a new one.   It has been around for years and, until practically yesterday, everyone who heard it – or read it on a placard – knew who the person saying it –or holding the placard – was and what this person was talking about.    That person was someone who identified as “pro-choice”, the choice in question being the choice of a woman to have an abortion.

Those of us who were on the right side of the abortion debate, the side that generally went by the label “pro-life”, would answer this slogan by pointing out that it was not just the woman’s body that would be affected by the abortion.    The unborn baby inside her would also be affected.    Indeed, its life would be terminated as that is the essential nature of an abortion.    The pro-choice movement has gone to great lengths to disguise the true nature of abortion from itself, and from those women contemplating one.    They use euphemistic language like “reproductive rights”, “reproductive health”, and the like in order to depict abortion as being merely a routine medical procedure.    They object strenuously to efforts by the pro-life movement to shatter this façade and bring the true nature of abortion out into the open by, for example, showing graphic depictions of aborted babies.

It can no longer be assumed, when one hears the slogan “my body, my choice”, that the person speaking is talking about abortion.   Indeed, it is probably safe to say that if you hear that slogan today, the chances are that the person saying it is not talking about abortion at all.    This is because in the last couple of months or so the slogan has been adopted by a different group of people altogether, those who are on the right side of the forced vaccine debate and are bravely standing up to the mob which, scared senseless by two years of media fear porn about the bat flu virus, is supporting governments in their efforts to shove needles into everyone’s arms whether they want them or not.

The mob’s answer to this new use of the slogan, when they bother to respond with anything other than “shut up and do what you are told” is similar to the pro-life movement’s answer to the pro-abortion use of the slogan.   It is not just our bodies, they tell us.   It is our duty to do our part to take the jab in order to protect others from the bat flu and if we don’t do our part the government should force us to do so by making our lives as miserable as possible until we do.

Before showing how and why the pro-life movement was right in its answer to the slogan as used by the pro-abortion movement while the supporters of forced vaccination are wrong in their answer to the slogan, it might be interesting to observe another way in which these two seemingly disparate issues intersect.    Among those of us who are on the side of the angels against forced vaccination there are those who are merely against vaccines being coerced and there are those who have objections to the vaccines qua vaccines.   Those who object to the vaccines qua vaccines could be further divided into those who are against all vaccines on principle and those who have problems with the bat flu vaccines specifically.    The latter include a large number of traditionalist Roman Catholics and Orthodox, evangelical Protestants, and other religious conservatives.    One of the reasons more religious conservatives have objected to the bat flu vaccines is that the mRNA type vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) are developed from research that used a cell line originally derived from an aborted foetus and the Johnson & Johnson viral vector vaccine used a cell line from a different aborted foetus in its production and manufacturing stage.

Now, let us consider some differences between these scenarios that render the pro-life movement’s response to “my body, my choice” valid, and the pro-forced vaccination mob’s response to the same invalid.

The pro-life movement objects that “my body, my choice” is not a valid defense of abortion because abortion causes the death of someone other than the woman choosing to have an abortion.    This is a strong argument because a) abortion always, in every instance, and indeed, by definition, causes such a death, b) the death is always of a specific someone who is known, to the extent an unnamed person can be known, and c) the death is always intentional on the part of the persons performing and having the abortion.   The opposite of all of this is true in the case of someone who rejects the bat flu vaccines.    Someone not getting a vaccine is never the direct cause of another person’s death.    An unvaccinated person can only transmit the virus to someone else if he himself has the virus.   Even if he does have the virus and does transmit it to someone else that other person is far more likely to survive the virus than to die from it.   This is true even if the other person is in the most-at-risk category.   It would be extremely rare, if it happens at all, that causing another person, let alone a specific other person, to die would be part of the intent in deciding not to be vaccinated.    Therefore, the argument that the pro-life movement uses against “my body, my choice” in the case of abortion, does not hold up as an argument against the same in the case of forced vaccination.

A second important difference is in how the expression “my body, my choice” is used by the two groups.   The pro-choice movement uses it against those who would prohibit women from having an abortion.   The opponents of forced vaccination use it against those who would compel everybody to take an injection.   To compel somebody to do something requires a much stronger justification than to prohibit them from doing something.    This is especially the case when it comes to medical procedures.   A reasonable justification for denying someone a medical procedure that is not urgently needed to save the person’s life from immediate danger is far more conceivable than such a justification for compelling someone to undergo a medical procedure.    In the case of the bat flu vaccines, the clinical trials of which will not be completed for another two years, many of which include mRNA which has never been used in vaccines before, which increase the risk of the heart conditions pericarditis and myocarditis, as well as thrombosis (blood clots) and Bell’s palsy, and which is for a respiratory disease that people who are young and healthy have well over a 99% chance of surviving and even those who are not young and healthy are far more likely to survive than not, the idea that compelling anyone to take these could ever be rationally justified is morally repugnant.

So we see that “my body, my choice” is weak and invalid with regards to abortion but is strong and valid with regards to forced vaccination (vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, etc.)    The only reason there is a mob supporting and calling for the latter today, is because people and businesses have been terrorized by the media and their governments and subjected to hellish lockdowns and restrictions for almost two years, are sick of it, would agree to almost anything to be rid of it, and so they jumped aboard the forced vaccination bandwagon when the public health mandarins said that we need vaccine mandates and vaccine passports to avoid another lockdown.   The public health mandarins are lying, however, as they have been lying since day one of the bat flu pandemic.  All that is needed for us to avoid another lockdown is for governments to start respecting our constitutional rights and freedoms and the constitutional limits on their own power.     They will only do this if we insist upon it.   Letting them get away with forced vaccination is not a step towards the return of freedom, but towards greater tyranny. — GERRY T. 19, FREEDOM, MRNA, TYRANNY, VACCINES

Manitoba medical student expelled over ‘pro-gun and pro-life’ Facebook posts wins court ruling

Posted on by

Manitoba medical student expelled over ‘pro-gun and pro-life’ Facebook posts wins court ruling

__________

Well, here’s a rare victory for free speech and the Charter’s feeble guarantee of freedom of speech and belief. The story shows the strident Cultural Marxist forces at a major university determined to expel a student for his Facebook postings opposing abortion. ” Rafael Zaki said he was expelled for his conscientious and religious beliefs. The judge said the university appeared biased in its decision. Rafael Zaki, a Coptic Orthodox student at the University of Manitoba who was supposed to graduate in 2022, posted three items on his Facebook page in February 2019. He was expelled in August 2019.” (National Post, August 11, 2021) Note the rush to judgement and expulsion, despite five letters of apology written by Mr. Zaki, all of which were rejected as insincere or incomplete. Dr. Ira Ripstein, who, the judge said, served “multiple roles including investigator, prosecutor and judge” rejected the letters of apology saying it “not clear to us that you have had any change of your opinion on sensitive topics.” To save himself Mr. Zaki would have to have renounced his sincerely held religious beliefs. So much for freedom of religion or belief at the University of Manitoba.

Dr. Ripstein argued in favour of expulsion, saying that “views based on misogyny and hate cannot be accommodated or condoned by the (medical school) programme.” Thus, in the intolerant ideology of Cultural Marxism rampant in academe, opposition to abortion is “hate”.

“Rafael Zaki said he was expelled for his conscientious and religious beliefs. The judge said the university appeared biased in its decision.” Judge Ken Champagne “found that there was a perception of bias and the university discipline system had failed to consider Zaki’s Charter rights to freedom of expression.” — Paul Fromm, Director, Canadian Association for Free Expression

The University of Manitoba lost its case against medical student Rafael Zaki.
The University of Manitoba lost its case against medical student Rafael Zaki. Photo by Brian Donogh/Winnipeg Sun/Postmedia Network

A Manitoba medical student who was expelled after failing to satisfactorily apologize for his controversial views on guns and abortion has been granted a new adjudication of his expulsion.

Rafael Zaki, a Coptic Orthodox student at the University of Manitoba who was supposed to graduate in 2022, posted three items on his Facebook page in February 2019. He was expelled in August 2019.

dslogo

One year later, after losing two appeals within the university system, Zaki asked Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench to review the decision made by the University Discipline Committee. Zaki said he was expelled “for holding conscientious and religious beliefs that abortion is harmful.”

The university, meanwhile, said that it must ensure professional behaviour and attitudes in order for its students to become doctors, and that Zaki was expelled for failing to reach that standard “even after numerous attempts … to assist (him) in remediating his conduct.”

Ken Champagne, the provincial judge in the case, found that there was a perception of bias and the university discipline system had failed to consider Zaki’s Charter rights to freedom of expression.

“The decision is quashed,” Champagne wrote, calling it “incorrect and unreasonable.”

Carol Crosson, Zaki’s lawyer, said the family had emigrated from Egypt because of concerns over freedom of religion.

“They came here to find freedom, and then their son went through this at the university,” Crosson said. “I’m very happy for the family that the trek to freedom has been positive in the final result.”

Two of Zaki’s Facebook posts were about the right to bear arms in the United States. The last, a lengthy essay he wrote for Sunday school, was about abortion, entitled “Refuting the ‘Final Solution’ for Undocumented Infants: A Reconciliatory Formula.”

“The posts can be characterized as pro-gun and pro-life,” Champagne wrote in his judgment.

In his essay, Zaki argued a doctor who provides an abortion — which he calls an “abortionist” — should be charged with first degree murder, and mandatory referrals to a doctor who provides abortion services constitutes “forced labour.”

Zaki’s posts received 18 anonymous complaints to the university and he was brought in for meetings with top faculty members. Zaki agreed he had written the posts and that they were unprofessional. He then made five attempts to write an apology letter regarding the posts, none of which were deemed satisfactory.

Failure to account for this serious concern is unreasonable and the decision cannot stand Judge Ken Champagne

“Your fifth apology lacked sincerity, as no evidence of any personal exploration or self-examination of any of your attitudes was provided,” the 2019 expulsion decision states, according to court documents. “Further, you continued to apologize for the impact your article had on readers, suggesting it was their fault for being offended.”

Zaki appealed the decision through the university’s internal processes, but it was upheld in January 2020 and again in July 2020 by two other school committees. In spite of his expulsion, he was allowed to continue in the program until the final appeal was dismissed.

The University Discipline Committee, the final appeal within the university, found that the Facebook posts were misogynistic and had a negative impact on the learning environment, Champagne wrote.

The judge considered a number of factors, among them, whether or not a university can judge someone based on their Facebook posts (the answer is yes) and whether or not there was a sufficient degree of procedural fairness in the university’s discipline system.

The judge found the process was largely fair, except when it came to a perception of bias on behalf of the decision-makers. And that, the judge concluded, was because of the role played by Dr. Ira Ripstein, the associate dean of undergraduate medical education, who was involved not just in the medical college’s decision to expel Zaki, but also in the final decision to affirm the expulsion.

“Failure to account for this serious concern is unreasonable and the decision cannot stand,” the judge wrote.

The Progress Committee had already concluded Mr. Zaki should be dismissed Judge Champagne

After Zaki sent his second apology letter, Ripstein sent him a letter saying it was “not clear to us that you have had any change of your opinion on sensitive topics,” and that the belief of the Progress Committee — responsible for student evaluation within the college — was that Zaki should be expelled. Three more times, Zaki sent in apology drafts.

“It is hardly surprising that they were all deemed insufficient, as the Progress Committee had already concluded Mr. Zaki should be dismissed,” the judge wrote.

Ripstein did abstain from the vote on whether or not to expel Zaki, “but that hardly matters,” the judge wrote, as Ripstein and another doctor jointly wrote the decision to expel him.

“(Zaki) describes Dr. Ripstein as serving multiple roles including investigator, prosecutor and judge. That is a fair description,” the judge wrote.

When Zaki entered the appeals process, Ripstein was involved, writing a “lengthy, comprehensive and powerful written submission” to the next committee, arguing in favour of expulsion, and saying that “views based on misogyny and hate cannot be accommodated or condoned by the (medical school) program.” The committee dismissed Zaki’s appeal.

(Zaki) describes Dr. Ripstein as serving multiple roles including investigator, prosecutor and judge Judge Champagne ruling

When the appeal went to the top committee at the university, the judge says, it “embraced the written submission of Dr. Ripstein.”

“Dr. Ripstein played a central role in the expulsion of the applicant,” the judge concluded. “Failure to examine and address his role and the reasonable apprehension of bias is a serious shortcoming.”

The judge also found that the university discipline system failed to consider Zaki’s Charter rights to freedom of expression.

From Bad to Worse

Posted on by

Throne, Altar, Liberty

The Canadian Red Ensign

The Canadian Red Ensign

Thursday, March 18, 2021

From Bad to Worse

It is less than two months since I posted an essay entitled “Death and Doctors” that discussed how in the depravity of modern progressive liberalism those who are supposed to have dedicated their lives to healing disease and injury, alleviating pain and suffering, and saving lives are now expected to take the lives of the vulnerable at either end of the lifecycle through abortion or physician assisted suicide.   As I pointed out in that essay, both of these practices were against the law throughout most of Canadian history and the latter practice was only legalized quite recently.   It was in 2014 that Lower Canada – Quebec to those who are vulgarly up-to-date – became the first province to legalize physician assisted suicide and in February of 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada once again flexed the shiny new muscle that Pierre Trudeau had given them in 1982 by striking down the law against physician assisted suicide in its Carter ruling.   The Court placed a one year delay on this ruling coming into effect in order to give Parliament time to fix the issues with the law which the Court considered to be constitutionally problematic.   The Liberals, however, won a majority government in the Dominion election that year and so passed Bill C-14 instead, which completely legalized the practice and, indeed, allowed for physicians under certain circumstances, to go beyond assisting in suicide and actively terminate the lives themselves.   Note that while I would like to think that had Harper’s Conservatives remained in power the outcome would have been different, I am not so naïve as to be certain of that.   Indeed, the week after the Carter ruling, I had discussed how the Conservatives appeared to be preparing to capitulate on this issue in “Stephen Fletcher, the Byfields, and the Failure of Canada’s New Right”.

Now, one might be tempted to think that with regards to the issue of physician assisted suicide there is not much further in the wrong direction that our government could have gone than Bill C-14.   One would be very wrong in thinking so, however, as the government has just demonstrated.  

On February 24th of last year, a few weeks before the World Health Organization hit the panic button because a new virus that is significantly dangerous only to the very sorts of people most likely to be on the receiving end of euthanasia had escaped from China and was making the rounds of the world, Captain Airhead’s Liberals introduced Bill C-7 in the House of Commons.  David Lametti, who became Justice Minister and Attorney General after Jody Wilson-Raybould was removed from this position for refusing to go along with the Prime Minister’s corruption, was the sponsor.    The aim of the bill was to make it easier for those who wanted what they are now calling “Medical Assistance In Dying” or MAID – in my opinion the acronym produced by the old convention of leaving out words of three letters or less would be more apt – but were not already on death’s door to obtain it.   

As bad as the original draft of Bill C-7 was, it has undergone revisions over the course of the year since its first reading that make it much worse.   The most controversial revision is the one that includes a provision that is set to come into effect two years after the bill passes into law and which would allow access to the procedure to those who are neither at death’s door nor experiencing extreme physical pain and suffering but only have severe mental or psychological conditions.    Since it could be easily argued that wanting to terminate one’s own life constitutes such a condition – I suspect the vast majority of people would see it as such – the revised version of Bill C-7 looks suspiciously like it is saying that eventually everyone who wants a physician’s assistance in committing suicide for whatever reason will be entitled to that assistance.

Last week the revised bill passed the House of Commons after the Grits, with the support of the Bloc Quebecois, invoked closure on the debate and forced a vote.    Since the bill will eventually make euthanasia available to those with merely psychological problems, why exactly the Bloc would support a bill with the potential to drastically reduce the numbers of their voters remains a mystery.    Jimmy Dhaliwal, or rather Jagmeet Singh to call him by his post-transition name as we would hate to mis-whatever anyone, announced that the NDP would not support the bill.   This should not be mistaken for an example of principled opposition to physician assisted suicide for the mentally ill, it was rather an example of voting the right way for the wrong reason – Singh’s rabid hatred of Canada’s traditional constitution.    In my last essay I pointed out how he, in marked contrast with the more popular and sane man who led his party ten years ago, has taken aim against the office of Her Majesty the Queen and wishes to turn the country into some sort of lousy people’s republic.   Here it is his problem with the Upper Chamber of Parliament that is relevant.   He did not like that some of the revisions were introduced in the Senate rather than the House of Commons.    As for that august body, the Senate passed the bill yesterday, by a vote of 60-25 with five abstentions.   This is easily enough explained.    Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day, and even though the Senate is the chamber of sober second thought, its members were probably drunk.   The only mystery here is, with apologies to the Irish Rovers, whether it was the whiskey, the gin, or the three-or-four six packs.

A little under a year before Bill C-7 was introduced, it was announced in the federal budget that that the Dominion government would be spending $25 million dollars over a five year period to develop a nation-wide suicide prevention service.   In the fall of last year, after the information began to come out about just how badly the insane and unsuccessful experiment in locking down society to prevent the spread of a virus had affected the mental health of Canadians driving suicide rates through the roof, the government announced that it would be investing $11.5 million towards suicide prevention for “marginalized communities” that had been disproportionately affected by this mental health crisis, which they, of course, blamed on the virus rather than on their own tyrannical suspension of everyone’s basic rights, freedoms, and social lives.   Apparently the government cannot see any contradiction between prioritizing suicide prevention and providing easily available assistance in taking one’s own life.

By funding suicide prevention programs the government would seem to be taking the side in the ancient ethical debate that says that suicide is a bad thing and that it is wrong to take your own life.   The strongest version of this ethical position has traditionally been that of Christian moral theology.   Suicide, in Christian ethics, is not merely a violation of the Sixth Commandment, as the Commandments are numbered by the Jews, the Eastern Orthodox, and most Protestants, but a particularly bad violation of this Commandment because it leaves no room for earthly repentance and is an expression of despair, the abandonment of faith and hope in God.   In other traditions, suicide is generally frowned upon but in a less absolute way.   In some traditions suicide brings shame upon the memory and family of the person who commits it except under a specific set of circumstances in which case it accomplishes the opposite of this by erasing shame that the individual had already brought upon himself and his family through his disgraceful actions, shame which could only be expunged in this manner.   It is easier to reconcile these traditions with each other – preserving one’s family honour is a very different motivation from despair – than it is to reconcile either with physician assisted suicide.    Physician assisted suicide in no way resembles what would have been considered an honourable suicide in any pagan tradition.  In Christian ethics, since taking your own life is so bad, getting someone else to help you do it or do it for you is downright diabolical.  

Perhaps the very worst thing about Bill C-7 is that gives even more power to the medical profession.   The liberalization of the Criminal Code in 1969 and the Morgentaler decision from the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988 gave doctors the power of life and death over the unborn.    This was already too much power, but the Supreme Court’s ruling in Carter in 2015 and the passing of Bill C-14 the following year gave them similar power over the elderly and infirm.   Last year, the Dominion government and every provincial government gave their top doctors dictatorial power over all Canadians, allowing them to suspend all of the basic Common Law rights and freedoms that are the traditional property of all of Her Majesty’s subjects regardless of Charter protections, power which they proceeded to disgracefully abuse as they gleefully and sadistically traded the serpentine staff of Asclepius for the Orwellian symbol of a boot stamping on a human face forever.   Now, Bill C-7 is extending their power of life and death even further in a most irresponsible way.   Physician assisted suicide is the foot in the door for outright euthanasia or “mercy killing”, extending the availability of the former to people who are not already dying will lead inevitably to doctors being allowed to perform the latter on those who are not already dying, and since it is doctors who get to say what is and what is not illness, mental or otherwise, the ultimate effect of this bill is to give the medical profession total and unlimited power of life and death over every Canadian.    Nobody should be trusted with that kind of power, least of all the medical profession as their behaviour over the last twelve months demonstrates.  Indeed, the disgrace they have brought upon their profession by their tyranny and their callous disregard for the social, psychological, spiritual and economic harm they have done with their universal quarantines, mask mandates and social distancing is such, that even seppuku on the part of all non-dissenting physicians may prove insufficient to restore their professional honour. Posted by Gerry T. Neal at 6:46 AM

Free speech critic of abortion bubble zone silenced at Ontario legislature

Posted on by

Free speech critic of abortion bubble zone silenced at Ontario legislature

And this is MPPs’ idea of democracy. All 3 abortion parties collude to gag anti-abortion protests.

Free speech critic of abortion bubble zone silenced at Ontario legislature
Paul Fromm is the Director, Canadian Association for Free…
YOUTUBE.COM

CAFE’S PRESENTATION TO ONTARIO LEGISLATURE COMMITTEE RE: BRUTAL RESTRICTIONS ON RIGHT TO PROTEST ABORTIONS

Posted on by

CAFE’S PRESENTATION TO ONTARIO LEGISLATURE COMMITTEE RE: BRUTAL RESTRICTIONS ON RIGHT TO PROTEST ABORTIONS

Canadian Association for Free Expression

Box 332,

Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3

Canadian Association for Free Expression

Box 332,

Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3

Ph: 905-566-4455; FAX: 905-566-4820

Website: http://cafe.nfshost.com

Paul Fromm, B.Ed, M.A. Director

October 19, 2017

Outline of Submission to the Ontario Legislature’s Standing Committee on General Government Regarding Bill 163. An Act to Enable the Safe Access to Abortion Services Act, 2017

            The provisions of this Act are a severe restriction on freedom of speech of persons wishing to protest abortions. This Act is less about “safe access” to abortion services than it is about preventing persons who oppose abortion possibly upsetting persons working in or accessing these services. There is no constitutional or human right not to be upset.

Abortion is a controversial and vexing issue. Following the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in R v Morgentaler, Canada, in effect, has abortion on demand. A woman may destroy her unborn child almost until its head emerges from the womb.  Thus, abortion is completely legal. On the other hand, many people, whether from sincerely held religious beliefs or secular moral ethics, believe the unborn child is not a piece of extraneous protoplasm but a human life. As such, they see abortion as murder. Some wish to protest abortion in general; some gather outside abortion clinics hoping to bringing these concerns to the people involved.

Thus, we have rights in conflict. Under existing laws protesters have no right to block access to a building or to assault people entering the building. These laws should be enforced. On the other hand, anti-abortion protests should be seen as informational pickets.

A report by on picketing by Gary Catherwood of Fasken Martineau (2005)  may be useful to the Committee: “ Common law tort principles apply. At common law, the Courts have very recently concluded that secondary picketing is permissible provided it is not done in a way which is otherwise tortious. The Courts have found that the right of an unrelated employer to perform business activities is less important than a union’s right to picket and communicate information about its dispute. .. Common law tort principles apply. At common law, the Courts have very recently concluded that secondary picketing is permissible provided it is not done in a way which is otherwise tortious. The Courts have found that the right of an unrelated employer to perform business activities is less important than a union’s right to picket and communicate information about its dispute.” As in a labour dispute, it is important for anti-abortion protesters to be at the site where abortions are performed, as it is for strikers to set up their informational picket at the site of the business being struck.

The safe zone of 150 metres — a football field and a half  — make a mockery out of the right to effectively stage an informational picket. Anyone violating a safe zone faces a fine of $5,000 and up to six months in prison for the first offence and subsequent infractions could see fines increase to $10,000 with up to a year in prison.

For perspective on these proposed draconian punishments, for example,  Section 445 (1) of the Criminal Code of Canada provides a fine of up to $10,000 and or up to 18 months in prison for killing, wounding maiming or injuring animals under one’s control. Thus, peacefully supporting human life inside the 150-metre bubble zone would attract the same penalty on second conviction as taking an axe and terminating the life of one’s cat or dog.

Injuring or endangering other animals
445. (1) Every one commits an offence who, wilfully and without lawful excuse,

(a) kills, maims, wounds, poisons or injures dogs, birds or animals that are not cattle and are kept for a lawful purpose; or

(b) places poison in such a position that it may easily be consumed by dogs, birds or animals that are not cattle and are kept for a lawful purpose.

Punishment
(2) Every one who commits an offence under subsection (1) is guilty of

(a) an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years; or

(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term of not more than eighteen months or to both.

 

 

Section 3.1(c) of this Bill  makes it a crime, inside the bubble zone, to   “perform or attempt to perform an act of disapproval

concerning issues related to abortion services, by any means, including oral, written or graphic means. ” Would driving one’s car even inadvertently past an abortion clinic with a pro-life bumper sticker be an offence? This law criminalizes expression of sincerely held religious or ethical beliefs.

 

In our respectful submission, this legislation is excessive, severely infringes on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and dissent and should be withdrawn or defeated.

____________________________________

The Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE) CAFÉ is a non-profit educational organization that was incorporated in the Province of Ontario, on April 13, 1983 CAFÉ has over 30 years of experience intervening in tribunals and court cases on issues of freedom of expression.