On a warm midsummer Saturday, they arrived with headsets and a megaphone. Through it they projected the words “don’t do it, you’ll regret it” while pushing empty prams up and down the street. “It” refers to having an abortion and their words reverberated so loudly staff and those at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) clinic in Finsbury Park who needed or wanted to terminate a pregnancy could hear them inside. And “they” are anti-choice, anti-abortion protesters who, in just two weeks in July, had set themselves up outside the clinic four times, leaving many patients traumatised, frightened and in tears.
Fortunately, this scene is hopefully to become a thing of the past, if this week’s vote is anything to go by. Last night, news came in that abortion providers, campaigners and hundreds of thousands of ordinary women had been praying for for over a decade: MPs have voted in favour of nationwide “buffer zones” — which prevent protesters from coming within 150 metres of an abortion clinic — in England and Wales. Offenders could now be hit with up to six months in prison for a first offence or as long as two years if they perpetrate additional crimes.
