Freedom of speech dying in Canada?

PC suppression of freedom of speech seems much further along in Canada than here.

Anyway, judging by the arrogance not only of her words but of her tone.

Activists condemn Canadian cinema chain for screening anti-abortion film

Abortion rights defenders in Canada have accused the country’s largest cinema chain of hiding behind freedom of expression laws in order to screen a controversial US anti-choice film which has been described as “anti-abortion propaganda”.

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) said Cineplex Entertainment has “made a decision based on money, not freedom of speech” by choosing to screen Unplanned.

ARCC executive director Joyce Arthur said: “The movie theatres who are agreeing to show this film under the guise of free speech are publicly legitimizing anti-choice views."

Oh, my. How dare they?

She told the Guardian: “Why does much of civil society seem to think it’s still OK to allow public challenges of women’s rights in the name of free speech? That would never be tolerated if it, for example, were a white supremacist movie.”

I doubt that anyone will be making any new, theater-quality white supremacist films in the foreseeable future (grid willing).

How would she feel about an arts theater showing Birth of a Nation, I wonder.

Her comments came after the chief executive of Cineplex Entertainment defended his decision to screen Unplanned, a movie based on a memoir by Abby Johnson, a former director of a Texas Planned Parenthood clinic who has become a prominent anti-abortion activist.

. . . .

In an open letter released Monday, Cineplex Entertainment chief Ellis Jacob said he made his decision to screen the film across Canada after receiving letters and calls on “both sides of the conversation”.

Jacob wrote: “Canada is a country that believes in and rallies behind freedom of expression, but that isn’t always an easy thing to do and it certainly doesn’t always make you popular.”

He said the decision was complicated and was not taken lightly, and that Canadians have the choice not to see the film.

. . . .

Abortion has been legal in Canada since 1988, after Dr Henry Morgentaler successfully petitioned the country’s top court to rule that its abortion law was unconstitutional.

However, anti-abortion sentiment is growing in Canada. Last year, Maclean’s magazine writer Anne Kingston profiled the resurgence of the anti-abortion movement in Canada, noting that many of the country’s anti-abortion political groups have close ties to their US counterparts.

With ‘Unplanned,’ Abortion Opponents Turn Toward Hollywood

The movie comes as conservatives are feeling emboldened to roll back abortion rights, including potentially overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, after the confirmation last October of Justice Brett Kavanaugh solidified their majority on the Supreme Court. 

Another anti-abortion film, “Roe v. Wade,” starring the conservative actor Jon Voight, was promoted at the annual March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., in January, but has yet to announce a distribution partner or release date.

. . . .

“Unplanned” is based on the memoir of the same name by Abby Johnson, a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Tex., who became a celebrity of the anti-abortion movement after what she said was a crisis of conscience.

The film dramatizes her conversion narrative and includes three unflinching portrayals of abortions, the first and most explicit of which occurs in the first 10 minutes.

. . . .

The abortion scenes earned the movie its R rating, for “some disturbing/bloody images,” which meant that its trailers couldn’t run in front of non-R-rated films, or even on some Christian radio stations, such as K-Love and Air1.

But the filmmakers said they weren’t willing to compromise on the graphic portrayals, which are central to the film’s appeal to viewers as a self-proclaimed exposé that promises hard truths.

In that first scene, teased in the trailer and on posters as “the moment that changed everything,” Abby, played by Bratcher, witnesses an ultrasound-guided termination of a pregnancy at 13 weeks.

The ultrasound, as depicted onscreen, shows a fetus with a discernible head, torso and limbs frantically squirming away from a doctor’s probe — an action that Abby later describes as “twisting and fighting for its life” — before being liquefied by suction.