Melbourne
The Supreme Court of Victoria handed
down its judgement
on March 21, quashing the appeal of an anti-abortion protester who
had been convicted for displaying images of aborted foetuses.
Michelle Fraser, an anti-abortion
protester, had displayed placards of aborted foetuses with
anti-abortion slogans, outside the Melbourne Fertility Clinic, in
February 2013. In 2014, she was convicted of displaying obscene
images.
The presiding judge had found that the
display of the “disgusting” images had not been a form of
political communication, but communication directed at the people
running the clinic and those attending as patients.
Fraser sought to appeal the ruling as
an infringement of the constitutionally implied right to free speech.
In dismissing the appeal, Justice
Emerson noted that what is “obscene” or “disgusting” depends
on the context: that images of aborted foetuses that might be
shocking to the general public might be appropriate in a medical
textbook or lecture.
She found that the law prohibiting the
display of obscene images struck the balance between political
communication and “the need to protect the public from unwitting
and unwelcome exposure to images that are at the highest end of what
is disgusting, repulsive, repugnant and offensive, having regard to
contemporary standards.”
Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT and now the
Northern Territory have now all legislated to create protest-free
buffer zones around abortion clinics. The bill to decriminalise
abortion in NSW, introduced by Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi contains a
similar provision (as did the bill recently withdrawn from Qld
parliament by Rob Pyne). The Victorian law came into effect after the
incident for which Fraser was convicted.
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