John McCracken on the PC’s provincial election win in New Brunswick: “You could practically hear the cheering from the corporate head office of Irving Oil at 10 King Square South in Saint John, New Brunswick.”
An important win for the right to choose movement! NDP MLA Claudia Chender’s abortion bubble zone legislation will likely go through third and final reading today. Once it receives royal assent the legislation establishes a 50 meter radius around abortion clinics and other locations where anti-abortion protest or other attempts at persuasion or interference will not be tolerated.
Last Wednesday NDP MLA Claudia Chender announced plans to introduce legislation to establish “bubble zones” to prevent harassment of people seeking abortion services in Nova Scotia.
Laura Slade talks with Megan Boudreau, who has vowed not to stop until abortion seekers are no longer harassed by demonstrators at the VG in Halifax. Boudreau tells her that she was “shocked to see the anti choice protesters out so often” and wonders how “such an open, cultural, and seemingly liberal community allows these anti choice protesters to harass people like this.”
You may think that abortion access in Nova Scotia has improved in the last few years. People trying to access pregnancy termination, along with the advocates and health care workers who support them, tell a different story. Laura Slade reports.
Laura Slade explains why she handed out leaflets at the opening of the anti-abortion movie Unplanned, and debunks the many lies and inaccuracies contained in the movie. “It’s important that all people who have had an abortion or are considering one know that they’re not alone, that this film that’s designed to make them look like and feel like terrible people is full of deception.”
Applied to current events, no march on Saturday will be better than any other. However, ensuring that there are marches in rural as well as urban areas is crucial in signifying both difference in lived experience and togetherness in the struggle for female empowerment, writes Lori Oliver. She then takes a closer look at two key problems for women in rural Nova Scotia are difficulties accessing abortion services and a higher rate of domestic, intimate partner violence—both of which disastrously intersect with how women continue to earn, on average, 87 cents to men’s $1. Barriers faced by racialized groups are even more severe.