Province announces plan to propose legislation to protect abortion clinic patients and staff

File photo of protesters holding signs across the street from the Kensington Clinic

Concerns from patients, staff members and neighbours of Alberta’s most prominent abortion clinics regarding the continued harassment they face at the hands of pro-life protesters have prompted the province to intervene.

“More than 75 per cent of the abortions in Alberta are performed at either Kensington (Clinic) in Calgary or Women’s Health Options here in Edmonton,” said Sarah Hoffman, Alberta’s Minister of Health. “Because of that, these two clinics have been targeted for years by picketers, protesters and individuals whose goal is to bully patients and employees.”

“Alberta women should have the right to access the care that’s right for them including safe action to abortion services.”

Celia Posyniak, the executive director of the Kensington Clinic, says the issue has been prominent since the clinic first opened and a permanent injunction, granted in 2002, did little to address the problem.

“Kensington Clinic has been the victim of anti-choice harassment for over 26 years now, often on a daily basis. We have been heckled at, threatened and even assaulted. Our clinic has been vandalized.”

According to Posyniak, the injunction fails to dissuade the protesters who have ‘regressive, minority views’ as the consequences of violating the order do not result in meaningful consequences.

“If somebody violates one of the rules like standing somewhere where they’re not supposed to be or if there’s too many people et cetera, we call the police, which we do regularly,” explained Posyniak. “(The police) show up, tell the person to move along (and) they do.”

“(The police) don’t take names and that person may come back the next day and do exactly the same thing and the whole thing repeats itself.”

Legislation has been in place to protect abortion clinics in British Columbia for decades and similar legislation has been recently adopted by Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland to prevent interference.

“In B.C. it happened 20 years ago following a fatality and I don’t want us to ever get to the position where we feel like it takes a death for us to act in Alberta,” said Hoffman. “We look forward to being able to table something and talk about it in greater detail in the days to come.”

Abortion is legal in Canada and the service is covered under the Canada Health Act.