A Windsor woman is calling for a municipal bylaw to ban the door-to-door delivery of pamphlets containing graphic, gory images.
Lauren Crowley of Feminists for Action received such a pamphlet in her mailbox Saturday, June 29. The next day she wrote an email to Mayor Drew Dilkens and members of city council.
A photo of the folded flyer received by Lauren Crowley Saturday, June 29. BlackburnNews.com has chosen not to publish the images inside. (Photo courtesy of Lauren Crowley)
"As someone who is relatively strong-stomached, it disturbed me," said Crowley. "That's what concerned me. I'm not someone in a vulnerable state receiving this literature."
Crowley's group gained public attention when it requested Windsor Regional Hospital implement a 150 m "bubble zone" around the hospital under the Access to Safe Abortion Act. It would force anti-abortion protesters to carry out their demonstrations further down the street and out of the sight of women seeking to terminate their pregnancies at the hospital. The anti-abortion group, 40 Days of Life, circulated a petition against the restrictions.
Crowley said her husband picked up the mail that day and saw a young woman delivering them to each house on her street.
"We all check our mail," she explained. "You're going to pull this out of your mail. It's going to happen. You are not giving somebody the option to walk away from it."
Calgary has such a bylaw. Council members in the Alberta city implemented it after similar outrage in their community when anti-abortion flyers were distributed to homes in 2016. Toronto also considered a ban two years ago, and complaints were made in Hamilton, Saskatoon, and Surrey, B.C.
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Crowley said she had not had a response from Windsor city councillors or the mayor. Dilken's chief of staff, Norma Coleman, told BlackburnNews.com he did not receive an email on the issue.
BlackburnNews.com also reached out to Ed Sleiman, councillor for Ward 5 where Crowley was living at the time. Sleiman has not replied.
It also reached out to the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform and has not received a response.
She said her concern is for women who may be retraumatized by the images after having a miscarriage and young children who may be picking up the mail for their parents.
"In addition to frightening a child who might come across those images, you're also forcing those parents to answer questions or have conversations that they might not be ready to have with that child," said Crowley. "Which, is in turn, interfering with that guardian right to raise that child how they deem fit."