FREEDOM TO PICKET

Freedom to picket
National Post
June 22, 1999

Mary Wagner is hardly a typical jailbird. She is a university graduate who does voluntary work with the disabled. And unlike some of the other inmates who spent the last five weeks in Vancouver's maximum security Correctional Centre for Women, she has never stabbed anyone, prostituted herself or sold drugs.

Ms. Wagner was convicted and sentenced last week for violating British Columbia's Access to Abortion Services Act. That law forbids any demonstrations -- including peaceful ones -- within 165 feet of abortion clinics. Ms. Wagner had handed flowers to women on the way into the clinic, appealing to them to reconsider their choice.

It may seem odd that British Columbia's NDP, which derives its dwindling support mainly from organized labour, would oppose peaceful picketing. But the attraction of the law to the NDP and the Left generally is that it prohibits picketing for one cause only -- abortion. No one may photograph or video an abortion clinic or doctor; "continuously or repeatedly observe" an abortion clinic or doctor; or even "protest" within 165 feet of a clinic or a doctor.

Now, abortion is legal in Canada; and abortion doctors and women seeking abortions therefore have a right to be protected from violence, intimidation and obstruction. But so have strike-breakers in an industrial dispute, and speakers espousing unpopular views on a college campus.

A law that forbids mass pickets -- with their potential for obstruction and intimidation -- within, say, 50 yards of a factory gate or an abortion clinic is not unreasonable. It should be supplemented, however, by another law that would allow two or three protesters to stand near the entrance where they could pitch moral appeals to those crossing the picket line. And both laws should be applied, whether the picketing is against abortion or for higher wages.

No one has a right to be protected from moral argument, feelings of shame or embarrassment, or simple offence -- these are inseparable from freedom of speech.