A small win, for once
Good to see the law coming down on the side of women for once.
In a rare and gratifying case in Brisbane last week, Judge Robin in the District Court found that the activities of Right to Life campaigner Graham Preston — obstructing clients and confronting them with offensive placards outside the Ridge Street Medical clinic — were both a "public and private nuisance".
The Ridge Street Medical Clinic is a private clinic which provides a range of medical services relating to fertility, including female sterilisation, vasectomies, contraception counselling and abortions. For years Preston has been conducting a weekly vigil outside the clinic bearing placards with enlarged photographs of aborted foetuses and slogans such as "abortion kills children".
According to Nancy Leighton, coordinator of Children by Choice in Brisbane, the case, mounted by the owner-operator of the Ridge Street Clinic, Dr Peter Bayliss, cost over $100,000 in legal fees, and $35,000 in court costs were awarded against Preston.
Leighton says the judge acknowledged that the case was a rare type of action, and one that clinic clients were unlikely to feel able to, or be able to afford to, mount on their own behalf. In finding for the plaintiff, the judge considered that he was also finding for the clients of the clinic.
But while the outcome in this case has brought a smile to the face of many a pro-choice activist, it does not solve the serious problem of anti-choice terrorism. Within hours of Judge Robin's handing down his decision, Nancy Leighton told Green Left Weekly, Preston was standing vigil outside Children by Choice. He has also kept up his harassment of staff and patients outside other clinics and centres offering abortion referrals, both in Brisbane and on the north and south coasts. Peter Bayliss' clinic may be temporarily free of him, but women in Queensland are not.
Nor is Graham Preston our only enemy. Across Australia similarly minded types stand outside abortion clinics with their placards and their holier-than-thou attitudes, physically harassing and shouting foul abuse at staff and clients. In the US, fundamentalist religious groups, such as Operation Rescue, regularly mount blockades which physically prevent staff and clients from entering clinic premises. There have also been threats of violence, fire-bombings of clinics and even shootings. Earlier this year Dr David Gunn died after being shot, point blank, by an Operation Rescue campaigner.
An isolated case such as Bayliss v Preston should not make us complacent. The courts will not protect us from the Prestons of the world. Even if we could afford $100,000 for an injunction against every anti-choice activist we came up against, we couldn't depend on the judges to grant them, nor the police to enforce them. Our only chance for real protection remains the building of an active and strong pro- choice movement.
By Karen Fredericks