BC pro-life activists found guilty of violating ‘bubble zone’
BY REBECCA MILLETTE
Wed Jun 22, 2011 18:53 ESTComments (0)Tags: Abortion, Bubble Zone, Canada, Vancouver
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two prominent pro-life activists were convicted of violating BC’s infamous “bubble zone” law in provincial court Monday.
Don Spratt was fined $1,000 and sentenced to two years’ probation and Cecilia (Sissy) von Dehn was sentenced to two years’ probation. Both intend to appeal their convictions.
The pair were arrested June 19, 2009 for standing inside the “bubble zone” outside the Everywoman’s Health Center abortion mill on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, BC. Spratt and von Dehn were passing out copies of BC’s Access to Abortion Services Act (the ‘bubble zone’ law) while wearing sandwich-board signs that identified the zone, “Warning! You can be arrested under Bill 48” and “Be informed. Read Bill 48.”
They were arrested by officers with the Vancouver Police Department, jailed, and charged with “protesting in an abortion services access zone” and “engaging in sidewalk interference.” Von Dehn had done the same thing on three other occasions during the month without being charged.
“Interesting interpretation that one is arrested, jailed, convicted for ‘protest’ for passing out to the public copies of a Law in BC which applies to a specific area,” Sissy von Dehn, a sixty-year old grandmother and long-time prolife activist, told LifeSiteNews. “If the abortion clinic workers passed out the same legislation in the same ‘bubble-zone’ would they be arrested for ‘protest’?”
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