Canada’s capital city has promised a review of its policies after a decision to raise the flag of an anti-abortion movement at Ottawa city hall prompted a heated backlash.
The flag was raised as part of the March for Life, an annual rally that sees thousands of anti-abortion campaigners from across North America descend on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
This year’s rally marked its 20th anniversary with a new event: a sunrise ceremony in which the movement’s flag was hoisted over Ottawa city hall for the first time.
Backlash was swift. Within hours, seven of the city’s councillors had signed onto a letter demanding that the flag be removed. “We the undersigned councillors are outraged that a flag representing a personal conviction to restrict a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion is flying on the ground of City Hall,” the letter noted. “Safe access to abortion is a fundamental and constitutionally-protected right enjoyed by all women in Canada.”
Others vented online. “We are a country of choice. That is the law of the land. Anti-choice flags should not be flown from city poles,” one person noted on Twitter. “Lower the pro-life flag, this is NOT the Handmaid’s Tale,” wrote another, while one asked: “What’s next? Gonna let anti-LGBT groups fly flags denouncing LGBT people’s hard-won rights?”
Tweets flooded into the account belonging to the city’s mayor, Jim Watson, with residents detailing their shock and embarrassment over the city’s decision. “I have lived in Ottawa since 2008 and this is the first time that I’ve ever been ashamed to call this city home,” wrote one resident.
By midafternoon – some nine hours after it was raised – Watson said the flag had been taken down. “For the record, I didn’t authorize it – city staff did as they do for all flag raisings,” he noted on Twitter, adding that he shared many of the concerns that had been expressed about the flag.
“I always have and will support a woman’s right to choose,” he added, and said he had asked the city clerk’s office to carry out a review into the official policies around flag-raising.
He said he had also asked city staff to review the policy around proclamations, after Planned Parenthood Ottawa questioned why – this year and in recent years past – the mayor had signed off on proclamations that declared Thursday as Respect for Life Day, to coincide with the rally. “We strongly urge Watson to protect sexual and reproductive rights at all times and not just when it’s convenient,” the organisation’s co-presidents wrote in the Ottawa Citizen.
In an email to the Guardian, the city said the request to raise the flag had come from an individual rather than a charitable or nonprofit organisation as required by city policy. When this was discovered, the flag was taken down. The city also pointed to policy detailing that proclamations are approved based on broad criteria and are not to be interpreted as an endorsement by the mayor or by the city.
Francis Barrett, the 89-year-old who had approached the city about raising the flag, said he was frustrated by the city’s reversal of its decision. “I’m trying to keep my blood pressure down,” he told Ottawa radio station CRFA. The move to take down the flag smacked of discrimination, he added, pointing to his three-decade long career with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “They are infringing on my rights as a taxpayer ... I was doing nothing wrong. The flag was doing nothing wrong.”
The flag-raising comes weeks after the city’s only publicly-funded abortion clinic complained that authorities had for years failed to protect their workers and patients from harassment and intimidation by protestors. Amid public outcry, the city said it had instructed its lawyers to explore options to better safeguard the clinic.
