The Melbourne abortion clinic fighting to end a decades long protest

Ever since it opened the Fertility Control Clinic in Melbourne has been plagued by protests and after 42 years they've had enough. But should people be excluded from protesting outside abortion clinics?

Ever since the first abortion clinic in Australia opened in the early 1970s, the Fertility Control Clinic in Melbourne has been plagued by religious protesters.

 

Now they’re taking the local council to the Supreme Court to force them to deal with the nuisance outside the clinic gates.

 

But protesters say doing that would trample their right to freedom of speech.

 

Dr Susie Allanson from the Fertility Control Clinic says women are already in a tough position when they come to the clinic and the protests just make it harder.

 

"It's a position that women don't want to be in," says Dr Allanson. "They don't want to have an unplanned pregnancy, and they don't want to have to have an operation or a medical abortion."

 

"Their very presence, I think, is a form of intimidation and shaming of women and trying to stigmatise women for coming into our clinic."

Ever since it opened in the 1970s protesters have been camped outside the Fertility Control Clinic.

 

Richard Grant from "The Helpers of God’s Precious Infants" - the group which protests outside the clinic - says they are just trying to help women.

 

"Over the past 21 years we have helped over 300 girls who have changed their minds right outside abortion clinics," says Mr Grant. "We believe there's never justification for a woman to have an abortion."

 

"Even though the mother may feel very bad about being raped... it's still her son or daughter."

 

Alison Thorne is a pro-choice campaigner who decided to have an abortion in 1975.

 

Ms Thorne says despite how people feel about the issue women should be allowed to make a decision for themselves.

 

"I was too young... I was 16... I wanted to go to university, I had plans," says Ms Thorne. "Being a teenage mother was not one of those plans."

 

"If you don't agree with abortion, don't have one, no one's going to make you... but don't impose your views and... your bigoted ideas on me."

And the Fertility Control Clinic says they have real concerns about how the protests are impacting on a women's right to choose.

 

Dr Allanson says the protestors don't understand what they're doing to women by protesting outside the clinic.

 

"They have no insight, no insight at all to the inappropriateness, offensiveness and harmfulness of their behaviour," says Dr Allanson. "In their mind they're saving babies and they're oblivious to what is actually going on, in terms of their appalling behaviour towards women."

 

"One woman stands there with two dolls... sort of, baby dolls, in her arms. And she's a very strange person and it can be very off-putting... a lot of them are quite strange and their behaviour is so inappropriate and offensive and intrusive. But they don't seem to have any insight into that."

 

There have also been serious security concerns at the clinic in the past.

 

On July 16 2001 a deluded pro-life crusader killed security guard Steven Rogers outside the Fertility Control Clinic. 'The Helpers' say he was not associated with them in any way.

After 42 years of protests, the clinic is now taking the Melbourne City Council to the Supreme Court. They hope to force the council to take action against groups like ‘The Helpers’.

 

"It's not good enough, in my view, that the Melbourne City Council simply say that the cops should intervene to solve this problem," says Elizabeth O'Shea from Maurice Blackburn Lawyers. "It's an inappropriate way of dealing with the problem and also it hasn't happened in the years that this issue has been going on."

 

"This is the first time that these powers under the Health and Wellbeing Act, will be tested... it's certainly our hope that we can set a precedent."

 

And if you look interstate there is already a precedent for taking action against protesters. Late last year, Tasmania voted to put in place exclusion zones to keep protesters more than 150 metres away from clinics.

 

It’s the first Australian state or territory to do so.

 

But the protestors say the court case won't stop them from campaigning and Mr Grant says they are even willing to fight their battle in the high court.

 

"They want to... criminalise dissent. They want to silence everybody... because we are a reminder of the horror of what's going on inside," says Mr Grant. "To stop us would deny our freedom of speech."

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