Man caught on camera kicking pro-life protester at anti-abortion rally

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Toronto police are investigating after a man was caught on camera kicking a pro-life, anti-abortion protester as she filmed him.

The man had reportedly been trying to disrupt a pro-life demonstration in the city when the woman - who later identified herself as Marie-Claire Bissonnette - started to film him.

He faces her and asks: "Hey, if somebody gets raped by somebody and they’re like ‘I’m a 16-year-old and I can’t keep this baby’, think you should keep it?” before motioning with a ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’.

Ms Bissonnette began answering: “It’s a baby. If someone gets raped and gives birth and she decides to kill her three-year-old child,” but was stopped when she was met with a roundhouse kick, which he appeared to gear up for for several seconds.

She immediately falls to the floor, while another woman can be heard saying “someone call the cops.” The clip ends abruptly but not before [the man] can be heard saying he “meant to kick [her] phone”.

The man reportedly fled the scene before officers arrived, police said. Ms Bissonnette, writing on pro-life website Lifesite News, faced non-life threatening injuries as a result of the incident, which took place on 30 September.

She wrote: “He ... forcefully roundhouse-kicked me in the shoulder, which sent my phone flying and I yelled for someone to call the police. In defence of his violence he claimed he’d meant to kick my phone, and then ... yanked off the ribbon I’d been wearing on my chest and ran away."

The victim appears to be part of a youth division of the group called Campaign Life, which identifies itself as “Canada’s pro-life organisation and political arm of the pro-life movement” in the youth group’s Twitter bio.

She described the event in her account of the incident as something called “Life Chain ... an annual event which consists of thousands of pro-life women, men and children standing on over 200 street corners across Canada holding signs that read, “Abortion Hurts Women”, “Abortion Kills Children,” “Adoption, the Loving Option”, "Life, We Stand On Guard For Thee’” and said the event was “explicitly peaceful and silent” protest.

Ms Bissonnette also said the man “managed to deface” two of the protesters' signs with a marker.