Anti-Abortionists Banned From Harassing Women
June 17, 2011 No Comments
Harassing women outside pregnancy clinics has become a popular pastime for anti-abortion activists, but in Germany they’ve been stopped in their tracks.
A court has ruled members of the Life Centre- Helpers for God’s Precious Children association may no longer approach people accessing a family planning centre to discuss “pregnancy conflict situations,” or show them pictures or objects on that theme.
The Life Centre group would regularly gather outside the Pro Familia advice centre in Freiburg, approaching women as they entered and exited the building. Members of Life Centre carried posters featuring aborted fetuses, called out “Please mummy, let your child live” and prayed with rosaries strung with plastic fetus trinkets.
Referring to themselves as “pavement advisors,” the group is also know for offering women $200 monthly maintenance as bribery for keeping their children.
This week the group appealed the court’s decision on the basis that individual women should have been required to make complaints; it was not enough for the complaint to come only from those who ran the clinic. Their appeal was rejected and the ban remains in place.
This is a pleasing development, but is it one that will ever occur in the US? Will freedom of speech laws permit it? Will the ever-growing conservative right allow it? Just this week anti-abortion groups asked for government money to fund their attack on Planned Parenthood. And they may well be granted it.
It should not be permitted for women who are at their most vulnerable to be subjected to such vicious abuse, instead they should be supported and protected.
Like the Germans, we deserve it in writing.
Contact the author here: brianna@morningquickie.com
