[krapp]

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.

[fqyzj]

>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.

[krapp]

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.

[fqyzj]

I did:

>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.

[makomk]

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.)

[causality0]

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.