To protect patients and staff, we need safe access zones around facilities that provide abortion in Saskatchewan. The petition signers urge the Saskatchewan Parliament to support Private Member Bill 608, “An Act to Provide Safe Access to Abortion Services”.  This bill would prohibit protesters up to 150 metres around each facility, and ensure that no-one can repeatedly harass or intimidate abortion workers in-person, by phone or online. (The bill was introduced in May 2021 as Bill 605 by NDP MLA Jennifer Bowes, who re-introduced it as Bill 608 in Dec 2021) 

Protecting abortion facilities and their staff not only allows people to do their jobs and attend work safely, but also prevents abortion seekers from facing discrimination and harassment from anti-abortion picketers. Safe access to abortion care should be considered crucial to the physical and mental well-being of all community members.  Implementing a “bubble zone” law would ensure that individuals have a more positive experience entering a safe and neutral space surrounding the clinic or hospital. These zones also foster community peace by reducing neighbourhood nuisance and noise and other hazards.

Currently in Canada, six provinces have already passed bubble zone laws including British Columbia in 1995, and in more recent years –Newfoundland & Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and Nova Scotia. BC’s law has successfully deterred protesters and protected people at clinics for 25 years, and other provinces are seeing similar positive results. Most of these provincial laws, as well as the Saskatchewan Bill 605, closely follow BC’s law, which has been upheld as constitutional. Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, protestors’ freedom of expression can be justifiably limited in a narrow manner to protect the privacy and dignity of patients and staff as they come and go from the facility.