Also to harassment and intimidation of individuals who have had things shouted in their faces and been squirted with water. I supported the banning of Britain First from the entrances of certain mosques after they intimidated people going in and out.
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People have the right not to go to abortion clinics and mosques, of course, and can avoid protests this way, but this verges on intimidating people out of exercising their freedoms, reproductive and religious.
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Obviously, protesters who exhibit threatening behaviour can be arrested but I'm inclined to think that keeping them just far enough away not to get in people's faces isn't a terrible idea.
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The problem with this is it's Speech v Association and if you balance rights (UK) rather than rank them (US) no-one will ever win. All you can do is assess who's being the biggest dick & legislate accordingly. I gather some of the protesters were being dickish.
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I see it as the difference between having the right to speak and having the right to force other people to hear you speak.
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Yes, a classic speech v association conflict, and very hard to sort out fairly.
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Does association relate to the right to make other people listen to you? I think that is key here.
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Association refers to the ability to choose one’s associates, so - of necessity - includes the right to say ‘I choose [not] to listen to you’ or ‘I choose to spend time in [x] company but not [y] company.’
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I see.
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They’re both negative rights, too, in the formulation popularised by Isaiah Berlin (traditionally, negative rights have primacy in any legal rights scheme). ECHR jurisprudence tends to balance them, SCOTUS jurisprudence ranks them (so, in the US, speech wins).
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It's the kind of thing that leads to retaliation. You have the right to yell at me when I'm trying to have a medical procedure? OK, I'll come and yell at you when you're trying to enter your place of worship. It mostly relies on people not being complete arseholes.
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If that's the case, pretty much any targeted protest suffers from that problem. I think it's fine when on public venues, but stalking anyone in private areas is going too far.
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Our hospitals and clinics are public tho.
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Exactly. So protesting there is fine. In fact protesting private owned hospitals is fine too. By saying private areas I didn't mean in the economical sense, instead I was talking about going to someone's home or something.
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It's beyond protest and crosses the line into intimidation often doesnt it? Screaming into women's faces, taking photos of them?
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I would be in favor of that petition. Of course abortion protests must be allowed to happen in public places, but they shouldn't be allowed to harass clinic goers. That's why keeping them at a distance at least during opening hours is sensible.
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I feel like we’re losing a lot of our freedoms to express ourselves because of small groups of people who abuse these freedoms.

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Hmmm, it’s a tough one but I might have to side with the petition, they have a right to protest of course but do they have a right to scream at people or be very close to them in an aggressive manner?
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And if a distance was agreed, should that distance be applied to all targeted protest eg protests outside restaurants that serve meat, protesters blocking doors or yelling at people going to speaker events etc?
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Blocking doors is definite no in my opinion. The rest is a difficult question.
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I see it quite often, or leaning into people’s faces screaming slogans as they try to go into a restaurant
But yes, it is a difficult question. Free speech should be championed
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