Province urged to file injunction against 'horrifying' anti-abortion images

Group says it has distributed hundreds of thousands of flyers to mailboxes in order to 'answer questions and provide information.'

Thestar.com
Aug. 24, 2017
By Scott Wheeler

A group of Toronto public officials petitioned the provincial government on Thursday to file an injunction to block the "disturbing anti-abortion images" that are increasingly appearing on posters and flyers in the city.

The letter is addressed to attorney general Yasir Naqvi, and backed by Toronto-Danforth MPP Peter Tabuns, Toronto District School Board trustee Jennifer Story, and city councillors Paula Fletcher and Mary Fragedakis.

In it, the quartet joined city councillor Sarah Doucette in criticizing the use of "horrifying images by an anti-abortion group, the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform."

"I think it's important because of the impact it's having on my community. People are horrified, they're traumatized, they're worried about their children," Tabuns said in an interview.

"We're in a society where free speech is guaranteed and I'm very glad of that but putting out images that are so horrendous is not something that is responsible."

CCBR spokesperson Devorah Gilman says the group has distributed hundreds of thousands of flyers to mailboxes in order to "answer questions and provide information." The group also has members carry graphic billboards at busy intersections.

"We do this where there's going to be foot traffic, where there are teenagers, adults, where we can be having conversations with those who might be considering abortion or know someone who might be considering abortion and we show the pictures," Gilman said.

But Tabuns says enough's enough.

"I think the attorney general has the power, the authority, and I think the responsibility, to protect the community from these really grisly, graphic images of chopped up fetuses," he said. "People are just outraged that these images could be used in this way in what they perceive as an assault on them."

The office of the attorney general did not immediately return a request for comment.

The attorney general can seek an injunction against "public nuisances" when they become so widespread that "it would not be reasonable to expect one person to take proceedings on his own responsibility to put a stop to it, but that it should be taken on the responsibility of the community at large," according to Lori Sterling and Heather Mackay in the Queen's Law Journal.

"Although we object to the message and the misleading information on the flyers we understand that freedom of speech is protected and we don't ask for prohibition of the message," Tabuns wrote, adding that many in his community have complained that children or pregnant women find the images in their mailboxes.

"Our concern is to protect children and adults who would be traumatized by distribution or display of these images."