HAMILTON, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — Campaign Life Coalition rebuked the Canadian province of Saskatchewan for proposing a bill that would make it illegal to demonstrate against abortion near facilities that perform infanticide.
On Friday, CLC denounced the province of Saskatchewan for proposing a bill that would create a 50-meter radius around hospitals to bar pro-lifers from demonstrating, picketing, protesting, or otherwise interacting with women considering abortion.
“The Public Health (Safe Access to Hospitals) Amendment Act, 2021 (Bill 48) would strip pro-life advocates of their democratic right to freely and peacefully witness to the sanctity of human life outside of Saskatchewan hospitals where abortions are committed,” said Jeff Gunnarson, National President of Campaign Life Coalition. “Censorious ‘bubble zone’ laws strip Canadian citizens of their rights and freedoms and have no place in a free and democratic society.”
Bill 48, which was introduced into the Saskatchewan legislature on November 10, seeks to make protesting for any reason, including abortion and the abortion-tainted COVID-19 vaccinations, illegal within a 50-meter (150 foot) radius of all hospitals in the province. The only accepted form of protesting under the bill would be union labor picketing.
“We understand that there’s people’s rights to protest, but it’s also people’s rights to be able to access our health-care system in a timely manner,” said Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman.
In response to the proposed bill and the minister’s statements, CLC’s Youth Coordinator Josie Luetke said, “It’s simply shameful to see a relatively pro-life government — both Premier Scott Moe and Health Minister Paul Merriman identify as pro-life — introduce legislation that attacks pro-life free speech.”
“This legislation actively thwarts pro-life attempts to save lives. If it passes, the blood of preborn children will be on the lawmakers’ hands,” she continued.
Although the bill includes a proposed expiry date set two years from now, as the legislation is primarily concerned with COVID-19 vaccine related protests, Merriman did add that the bill can be renewed if deemed necessary.
Last month, a similar bill was proposed and subsequently rejected in Saskatchewan’s neighboring province of Manitoba, leading CLC to express its gratitude for the province’s defense of unborn life.
On October 1, the Manitoba legislature voted 30-20 against “anti-free speech and pro-abortion” Bill 207, which sought to create “bubble zones” around abortion facilities in the province. The thirty votes rejecting the bill comprised all of the Progressive Conservative members of the legislature, demonstrating a united front on the issue.
“We congratulate Progressive Conservative [members of the Legislative Assembly] for defeating this bill by a vote of 30 to 20 that specifically targeted pro-life speech. Censorious ‘bubble zone’ legislation has no place in a free and democratic society,” said CLC Manitoba President Maria Skylerman.
Prior to the recent success Manitoba had in thwarting its own “bubble zone” bill, the province of Ontario failed to do so in 2017, with provincial legislators passing the misleadingly titled “Safe Access to Abortion Act.” The passing of the bill in Ontario successfully barred pro-life activists from being able to legally demonstrate or minister within 50 meters from the property line of abortion clinics.
While official statistics from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) have reported a decline in abortion from 108,844 in 2011 to 83,576 in 2019, pro-life advocate Patricia Maloney discovered through Freedom of Information requests that the CIHI failed to include a whopping 18,278 abortions in their 2019 figure for Ontario alone, meaning the real number of abortions conducted in Canada per year is 100,000 at a minimum.
With over 100,000 abortions and only 372,711 births during the same year, at least one in five Canadian pregnancies ended in abortion in 2019.