Double standard alive and well for pro-life people

By Patricia Maloney

Mayor Jim Watson and my councillor Tobi Nussbaum never had the courtesy to answer my question as to why our rights of peaceful protest were ignored when the Ottawa Police re-routed the March for Life. Mind you I'm used to politicians not answering my questions since apparently we don't deserve the same respect as other people.

Now Watson is asking for a bubble zone. Christie Blatchford's take on this in today's National Post:

"Let it never be said that the state is shy about using an elephant gun to kill a flea.

I give you the latest musings of Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi, who this week announced that next fall, his government is going to legislate “safe access zones” around abortion clinics to “help ensure the safety and privacy of women, visitors and health-care workers travelling to and from these facilities.”

Naqvi, who represents a downtown Ottawa riding where a Morgentaler Clinic is located, alluded to recent “serious instances of intimidation, harassment and even assault” towards patients there. Urging the province to act were Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Catherine Macnab of Planned Parenthood Ottawa.

Perhaps there’s a real issue in Ottawa, though there has been little hard reporting of it. Some protesters there wear sandwich boards featuring photos of lurid and cut-up bodies, and yell at patients that they are killing their babies, clinic staff say."

Good point. If there's been so many problems at the Morgentaler facility, where is all the reporting of it? And if there are bone-fide problems why don't the police deal with them? Like they do everywhere else there are harassment problems?

In fact in 2012 abortion doctor Wendy Norman said this in her study Abortion health services in Canada:

“Facilities reported very little harassment. No Canadian facility reported a resignation of an abortion provider–physician or any staff member owing to harassment. Only a single facility reported any resignation of an allied health professional staff member, and in this case the facility specified that the one resignation was not owing to violence, fear, or threats. Similarly, two-thirds of reporting facilities (49 of 74, 66.2%) indicated no episodes of harassment or violence in 2012, with a further 28.4% (21 of 74) reporting solely picketing without interference. Among 7 facilities reporting “other” episodes of harassment, half specified only receipt of harassing e-mail.”

So if one of Canada's premier abortion doctors says there is virtually no harassment or problems at abortion facilities, why is Yasir Naqvi and Jim Watson using an elephant gun to to kill a flea? It's because there are two sets of standards in "civilized" society today. One set for pro-life people. And one set for everybody else.