It could be a criminal offence to protest abortion within a 150 metre exclusion zone around abortion clinics if an Australian private members’ bill is passed.
The New South Wales member’s bill is seeking to make it a criminal offense to:
“bother, beset, harass, intimidate, interfere with, impede, obstruct or threaten, by any means, a person who is accessing, leaving, or attempting to access or leave, premises at which abortions are provided.”
The bill will also repeal all laws punishing “unlawful abortion”.
Anyone attempting to dissuade a woman from having an abortion could face up to six months in jail if they were inside the exclusion zone, the bill proposes.
This would even include the father of the unborn child or the woman’s mother.
It also proposes criminal charges follow if pro-life activists “film, photograph or record video or audio of individuals accessing or leaving an abortion clinic in the name of privacy”.
In addition, the bill requires doctors who object to abortion to refer the patient to another doctor with pro-abortion views.
The Australian Christian Lobby and the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher and anti-abortion MPs are lobbying against the bill.
Queensland MP Fiona Simpson said decriminalising legislation would legalise the “killing of unborn children up until the point of birth”.
Source
- Buzzfeed News
- LifeSite
- Image: Health and Mind Care