The Government of Alberta is proposing new legislation with the intent to help clients of abortion clinics feel safer by creating a zone outside those facilities where protesters won’t be able to go.

Alberta’s Health Minister Sarah Hoffman visited the Kensington Clinic on Wednesday and says it helped her get a first-hand look at how the proposal would help clients.

She says that staff and the women who use the clinics were the ones who came forward and asked for help.

“[They] said it’s not okay that we have to face a barrage of heckling and bullying when we come to our doctor’s appointments. It’s not okay that, in Edmonton the injunction did not apply to the sidewalk. So they’d literally had people blocking the sidewalk and they would have to walk through mud puddles to get into their doctor’s appointment.”

The bill, tabled earlier this month, would prevent protesters from coming within 50 metres of abortion clinics that exist outside of hospitals and it would also make it illegal to photograph or protest patients or staff.

Hoffman says the zone will give law enforcement more tools to make sure that proper behaviour is upheld.

Celia Posyniak, a worker at the Kensington Clinic, says the proposal will help them.

“We’ve seen from time to time the numbers of protesters escalate and we spend a lot of our day phoning police or shooing people away. There have never been penalties for anybody; they can come back the next day, sometimes as soon as the police leave.”

She says that it’s not an issue of free speech at all.

“It’s an issue of harassment and the right to privacy and women deserve that. They deserve to access health care without a bunch of bullies outside yelling at them and our staff deserve to be able to come to work and not have to be looking over their shoulder and wonder if someone is taking their licence plate.”

Karen Bout, with the group 40 Days for Life Calgary, calls the proposal ‘completely unnecessary’.

“There’s been no harassment of women entering the clinic. We’re really, as part of 40 Days for Life, we’re there to help women and give them a message of hope and really an alternative to having an abortion. We want them to know that they can have a baby, they can place the baby for adoption and there’s a lot of support in our community for them to do that.”

She’s sad that if the law passes, that voice could be taken away.

Alberta would be the fifth province in Canada to pass such a law.

“B.C. has had this in place for about two decades. Ontario recently passed legislation as well as Newfoundland & Labrador and Quebec. We think that Alberta women deserve the same protections as other provinces,” Hoffman said.

Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party says he won’t vote on the bill because he thinks it isn’t about the issue at all.

“This is about an NDP government seeking a diversion, a distraction from its failed economic record, their massive increase in debt, their huge level of unemployment, their failure on the pipeline and we’re not just going to reward them with that kind of cynical and divisive politics.”

Hoffman says that she is taking the advice of women who have come forward and told her that there is a problem.

“Nothing is going to stop us from standing up for women.”

(With files from Ina Sidhu)