B.C.’s highest court has dismissed a constitutional challenge to the province’s Access to Abortion Services Act, which restricts protesters around abortion clinics to a distance of 30 meters.

The law was enacted by the provincial legislature in 1995 to address escalating harassment by anti-abortion protesters of women entering Elizabeth Bagshaw Women’s Clinic in Vancouver.

The Canadian Press reports,

Protesters outside the clinics carried graphic signs, blocked the sidewalks and access and conducted so-called sidewalk counselling to try and dissuade women entering the clinic from getting an abortion.

Though the “bubble-zone law” was brought in by the B.C. government in response to what Jill Doctoroff, executive director of the aforementioned clinic, called “intimidation techniques” by protesters, it was the 1994 shooting and near-death of a Vancouver abortion provider that accelerated the government’s response.

The challenge was brought forward by Gordon Watson and Donald Spratt, who were charged in 1998 for breaking the Act by engaging in “sidewalk interference” with women entering a Vancouver clinic. Following their conviction in both provincial and B.C. Supreme Court, the pair took their challenge to the B.C. Court of Appeal arguing that the “bubble-zone” law infringed on their freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights.

The three Appeal Court judges ruled unanimously that the right to protest against abortion is justifiably limited by the Access to Abortion Services Act’s objective to protect vulnerable women.

Justice Catherine Ryan writes in her ruling that,

The objective of the Act justifies the limited infringement of freedom of expression in the circumstances,

and that,

The object of the Act is to protect vulnerable women and those who provide for their care to have safe, unimpeded access to health care services.

The court noted that the right to express opposition to abortion is constitutionally protected, but that it is not violated by the provincial legislation.