Author: Richard Dur
Inspired by an actual incident. The opening scene has been reimagined. Actual names and dates have been withheld.
She remembered the waiting room. The chairs. The paperwork. The pleasant voices telling her everything would be fine.
She remembered the hollow silence afterward, too. That was the part nobody had warned her about.
Most of all, she remembered the child she never met.
Years later, she stood across a two-way street from another abortion facility. Not the one where she’d had her abortion. But it might as well have been.
Cars passed between her and the building. People came and went. Nothing about the place suggested anything extraordinary.
She had come hoping to spare another woman the grief she knew so well.
She carried no placard. She shouted no slogans. She blocked no doorway. She didn’t even cross the street.
She simply spoke with women willing to listen. “I had an abortion. They said I’d feel relieved. I didn’t. I’ve regretted it every day since.”
Some listened. Some didn’t. Those who wished to leave did so. Those who wished to talk stayed.
Two women talking. One telling the other something she wished someone had told her.
That should have been the end of it. It wasn’t.
After one such conversation, a police officer approached. “Ma’am, you’re not allowed to do that here.”
“Do what?”
“Try to talk women out of having abortions. You’re inside the access zone.”
“But I’m across the street.”
“The access zone extends 50 metres from the property.”
“I haven’t even crossed the road.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
She looked at him for a moment, trying to understand.
“I haven’t threatened anyone. I haven’t obstructed anyone. And when the woman no longer wished to speak with me, I left.”
The officer listened. Perhaps he even understood. Then he reached for his ticket book.
“It’s against the law.”
There it was. Four ordinary words. His words carried the authority of the state. Her words constituted an offence against it.
She looked at the yellow ticket.
A date. A courtroom. The machinery of the law, set in motion. For a conversation. In an “access zone.”
She looked again at the building. Years ago, in another place much like it, she had been told that the choice was hers. That nobody had the right to tell her otherwise.
She had believed them.
Now she was being summoned to appear in court for telling another woman what that choice had cost her.
The law had protected her right to have an abortion. It would not protect her right to speak about regretting one. Not where or when it mattered most.
Across the street, women continued through the doors, free to make a choice. But not, apparently, free to hear from someone who had made it before them.
She had wanted to tell them something. The law had something to tell her instead.
How We Got Here
The law that brought a police officer across that street has a history.
In 2018, Rachel Notley’s NDP government introduced Bill 9, the Protecting Choice for Women Accessing Health Care Act.
Its stated purpose was to protect women seeking abortions and abortion facility staff from harassment, intimidation, and interference.
It established “access zones,” commonly called bubble zones, around abortion facilities, generally extending 50 metres from their property boundaries.
But the law goes beyond prohibiting threats, harassment or obstruction. It also restricts certain forms of communication intended to dissuade women from obtaining an abortion. And that is where the woman across the street enters the story. Even a peaceful conversation between two willing participants can fall afoul of its provisions.
When Bill 9 came before the Legislature, the Official Opposition was led by Jason Kenney.
Kenney denounced the legislation as political gamesmanship by the NDP, arguing that existing laws already addressed harassment.
He and his caucus responded by walking out of the Legislature.
Not once. Not twice. Fourteen times.
Only one UCP MLA, Angela Pitt, spoke to the bill during debate.
Independent MLA Derek Fildebrandt opposed the bill’s restrictions on free expression, proposed amendments, and ultimately cast the lone vote against the bill at third reading.
The legislation received Royal Assent on June 11, 2018.
Jason Kenney became Premier the following year.
The law he had denounced as unnecessary remained on the books throughout his premiership.
Danielle Smith succeeded him in October 2022.
The same Danielle Smith whose government would later enact “Jordan Peterson’s law,” protecting regulated professionals from disciplinary actions for expressing their personal opinions outside the workplace.
Smith declared: “When regulators begin disciplining people for simply speaking their mind on their own time, that’s overreach, and, at its worst, it becomes an outright threat to free expression.”
Yet while Smith’s government legislated to protect professionals from punishment by their regulatory bodies for speaking their minds, it left ordinary Albertans who oppose abortion exposed to punishment by the ultimate regulator – the state itself – for speaking their minds outside an abortion facility. Even when the conversation is voluntary. Even when it takes place on public property.
In October 2024, the Western Standard asked Alberta Health whether the government intended to change the law.
The answer: “We have no plans to make changes.”
Six words. No accompanying explanation. No plans to reconsider the restrictions on free speech.
Two years later, and the law still remains in place.
The Law and the Woman
The government maintains that access zones protect patients and staff from harassment and interference. The woman across the street illustrates the tension between that purpose and the law’s reach.
She did not threaten anyone. She did not obstruct an entrance. She didn’t even cross the road to the side where the abortion facility is located.
The conversations were voluntary.
Yet she faces the prospect of prosecution for speaking.
Mahatma Gandhi once wrote:
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
Gandhi understood that legality and justice are not interchangeable. A law’s existence does not settle its moral legitimacy.
An unjust law does not become just because its enforcement is polite. The officer may speak softly. The ticket may be issued without incident. But behind it stands the coercive power of the state.
There is a distinction between protecting a woman from harassment and preventing her from hearing someone she has voluntarily agreed to listen to. If the purpose is to prevent harassment, why does the law also reach conversations in which no one is harassed?
In Alberta, abortion services are fully paid for through the public healthcare system. Albertans are not merely spectators to this debate. They are taxpayers who, willingly or not, finance both the abortions and the enforcement of a law that prohibits attempts to persuade women not to obtain them.
But for the woman across the street, this was no abstract debate about public policy. Another human life was at stake. She knew what it meant to end the life in her womb – and what it meant to live with that decision. She had come to offer other women the support and understanding she wished someone had offered her before her own abortion.
The woman across the street had something to say. The women she spoke with were willing to listen. Either could have ended the conversation.
But the state had entered it, too.
And it would not take no for an answer.
You can learn more about Alberta’s abortion bubble zones and how to fight back by visiting PopAlbertaBubbleZones.com.
Richard Dur is the volunteer Executive Director of Prolife Alberta and an award-winning political consultant with experience on campaigns across Canada.