So is me not being able to demonstrate inside your house. That free speech can be limited by the right of free association, private property and public safety needs has been an established principle for centuries.
And if anti-abortionists can demonstrate elsewhere, which they can and do, it isn't much of an issue. It's not as if the pro-life camp is at risk of not having their views heard if they can't block the doors to abortion clinics and call women whores and killers right to their faces.
>So is me not being able to demonstrate inside your house.
That is quite the movement of goalposts. "Outside an abortion clinic" is by definition a public space. Inside my house is not a public space. Demonstrating in a public space should be protected as free speech.
I think you moved the goalposts from making a broad argument about free speech to now a narrow argument about property rights.
Now maybe try to address my actual point, which is that no rights are absolute and always need to be balanced in context against other rights and public safety.
>Demonstrating in a public space should be protected as free speech.
That, for me, is an absolute.
Demonstrating doesn't include blocking a highway or not allowing entrance to such clinic. Not even touching a client or worker. But staying there? Yes of course it should be protected.
If that's actually such an established principle, there wouldn't be such a problem with the way the law goes after "peaceful actions used by those protesting about human rights and environmental issues" because the peaceful actions it's targetting are things like protesters gluing themselves to famous artworks in museums, public protest whose main goal is to shut down major roads, railways and other critical infrastructure rather than protest somewhere where they're likely to be seen by the public, and vandalism of company headquarters. After all, it's not like the environmental activists are at risk of not having their views heard if they can't sling paint all over the doors of fossil fuel and chemical companies and banks and call their employees murderers to their faces, especially since most of the mainstream media in this country is already on their side.
If you scroll down to the bottom of the comments, downvoted into the grey, someone even linked an article pointing out that these protests included roadblocks that stopped ambulances getting through. Clearly public safety only matters sometimes. (And to be clear, this wasn't an incidental side effect of some protest where the sheer volume of protesters caused disruption. Building blockades and maintaining them for days/weeks was the protest action.)
Someone does have the right to demonstrate inside your house, if you've first invited them to be there. Even if you tell someone "I'm only inviting you inside if you don't bring up abortion" and they do anyway, they have not committed a crime unless they also refuse to leave after you revoke their invitation. If someone has the right to be at a location they have the right to peacefully protest there.
Free speech does not allow the right to do harm. We can debate where exactly that line is, but in my book protesting right outside of a clinic is harassment.
Why does the protest have to be right in front? Isn't a march through the city just as, if not more, effective to get your voices heard? Of course you won't be able to terrify vulnerable young women, but it'd be great if we could all agree that's a good thing!
If you are mentally capable of doing something then you should be mentally capable of hearing that doing that is wrong - it'd be great if we could all agree that's a good thing, also.
Using the term "vulnerable young women" is trying to remove the agency from them, which is despicable.
> If you are mentally capable of doing something then you should be mentally capable of hearing that doing that is wrong - it'd be great if we could all agree that's a good thing, also.
Would you be okay if, for the rest of your life, protesters stood in front of your home and shouted "die for breathing, die for breathing"? Presumably not, right? Although you're mentally capable of breathing, which should mean you're mentally capable of hearing that doing that is wrong?
> Using the term "vulnerable young women" is trying to remove the agency from them, which is despicable.
Can you explain why? I don't see how any agency is removed from them. Pregnancy itself makes women more vulnerable, and someone going through a very hard decision will be impacted even more. Whose agency did I just try to remove?
By definition, breathing and killing are complete opposites.
I wouldn't like it if people shouted slogans in front of my house but they have a right to it.
If women are in a vulnerable, hormonal state maybe they shouldn't be the ones making these decisions. Either they can make the decision and go through the consequences, or they can't. There's no middle ground of doing something and then having people who disagree with what you did silenced.
So no thing that isn't a person (yet) can be vulnerable?
Pets can't be vulnerable? Trees can't be vulnerable? Buildings can't be vulnerable?
Perhaps the baby is extra vulnerable exactly because it isn't a person yet capable of defending itself. It will become one though, unless someone murders it out of selfish convenience.
No problem with abortion but protesting outside an abortion clinic isn't doing harm; not in the criminal sense at least unlike all the domestic abuse the MET have failed to prosecute.
A similar argument could be used for environmental protestors blocking a highway (the reason the bill was created) - they're interfering with someone else's right to travel.
Are the abortion protestors blocking access to the clinic? That's not the sentiment I got. They don't interfere with anyone's right to abortion, they are expressing their dissent about it (presumably on grounds of a child's right to be born).
And if anti-abortionists can demonstrate elsewhere, which they can and do, it isn't much of an issue. It's not as if the pro-life camp is at risk of not having their views heard if they can't block the doors to abortion clinics and call women whores and killers right to their faces.