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BC Pro-life Advocates Testing the Limits of Bubble Zones

By Hilary White

VANCOUVER, May 5, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This Thursday, the BC Court of Appeal heard testimony from pro-life and civil liberties interveners in the case of Gordon Watson and Don Spratt who were arrested in December 1998 for having stood inside a “bubble zone” in front of Everywoman's abortion site in Vancouver.

The two men are appealing convictions of violating BC’s Access to Abortion Services Act that prohibits pro-life sidewalk counselors or protesters within 50 metres of an abortion facility. They were holding a wooden cross and signs that said “Abortion is Murder” and “Unborn Persons have a right to live.”

Interveners in the appeal case include the BC Civil Liberties Association that argues the bubble zone law is a violation of freedom of expression. Also intervening are Canadian Nurses for Life and a coalition of religious groups including the Catholic Civil Rights League and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

Sissy von Dehn, the Vancouver representative of Canadian Nurses for Life said the case is important because local people have little knowledge of the bubble zone restrictions. “The existing bubble-zones live calmly in their own orbit with little public knowledge of where they are and why,” she told LifeSiteNews.com in an email.

Local pro-life advocates have undertaken to inform the public with literature about the different ways that some kinds of protest can “cause instant arrest.” She said abortion facilities’ staff have called police to try to stop this action but since the only literature being handed out were copies of the legislation “they backed off.”

Von Dehn said, “This year we have signs to wear right in a zone  that read, “You Are In A Bubble-Zone,”  “Be Informed” and  “You Can Be Arrested  Here.” Copies of the legislation were passed out and there was a massive amount of interest and questions” from passers by.

Public information campaigns have caused Everywoman’s abortion facility to move shop at least once in the last ten years. Pro-life activists hope that the public revulsion for abortion, even among those who publicly support abortion “rights” will be enough to have the facility shut down again.

The Vancouver group is planning on testing and challenging the legal limits of the law. Von Dehn said, “We plan to go to other sites where the signs would be quickly noted and begin to inform the public in a more active way to see if it  is taken as an abortion protest. If so, we want to know will a judge interpret informing the public about this legislation that makes distributing legal information to the public a crime.”

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