Earlier this month, a pro-life activist was arrested for violating British Columbia’s bubble zone around abortion clinics. For the fourth time in the last few months, Lane Walker stepped into the bubble zone to bring a pro-life message. Outside the Everywoman’s Health Center in Vancouver, he set up a display that mentioned two Bible verses. One verse was “What you have done to the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). The second verse read, “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became enraged, and slaughtered all the male children who were in Bethlehem” (Matthew 2:16).
While neither of these verses directly mentions abortion, both quotations were accompanied by a three-word message: abortion kills children.
And abortion does indeed kill pre-born children. Over 101,000 abortions were committed in Canada in 2023. Nearly 14,000 of these were in British Columbia. For every three children born alive in British Columbia, one is aborted.
Despite this massive tragedy, Walker’s goal was not primarily to bring attention to the injustice of abortion itself, but to protest the bubble zones. During his vigil on January 6th, he engaged with police passersby about his disagreement with the bubble zone legislation, “which functionally make[s] it a crime to protest a crime, which abortion is” according to his press release.
This “bubble zone” law was enacted in 1995 as the Access to Abortion Services Act. It bans pro-life advocates from protesting abortion or even trying to dissuade women from having an abortion within 50 metres of an abortion facility. Anyone convicted of violating this law faces a fine of up to $5000 or six months in prison for their first offence. For every subsequent offence, a person can be charged up to $10,000 or spend a year in prison.
However, that isn’t what the police ended up charging Lane Walker with. Instead, the police charged him with mischief under Canada’s Criminal Code. According to Walker, this “would be the equivalen[t] of charging the civil rights marchers with unlawful assembly or disorderly conduct for marching without a permit.”
Walker’s hearing is scheduled for March 18. However, because he was not charged with violating this bubble zone law, he will not be able to legally challenge this law in court.
The goal of his protest is to point out that establishing bubble zones around abortion clinics to outlaw pro-life speech there infringes on his Charter freedom of expression. The freedom of expression is one of the four “fundamental freedoms” guaranteed to Canadian citizens in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Walker has made frequent use of his freedom of expression. By his own admission, he has protested near abortion clinics many times in the past. He has been arrested 11 times for violating abortion clinic bubble zones or court injunctions. And Walker has spent over 29 months in prison for his pro-life activism.
In a recent media interview, Walker explains why he has gone to such lengths to protest abortion and why more action is necessary. “If you really believe that this is the killing of an unborn child, then maybe we should be acting like it,” he said.