AN American anti-abortion campaigner has compared Scotland to North Korea and claimed that Nicola Sturgeon is a “bully” and a “bigot”.
Shawn Carney, the CEO of the 40 Days for Life campaign – which coordinates 40-day, non-stop prayer vigils outside abortion facilities across the globe – took issue with the First Minister’s intention to introduce protest buffer zones around abortion clinics in Scotland.
In a YouTube video Carney said: “It is easier to do a 40 Days for Life in China and work with the Chinese government than it is the Government of Scotland.
“And how can that be? Because Scotland represents Braveheart, one of the greatest movies of all time. How sad it is, William, that no one will come and take your freedom, your country will forfeit it itself and implode on it itself by restricting free speech.
“If Scotland wants to ignore freedom of speech, if Scotland wants to ban or lock-up those who disagree with them or forbid them from taking part in public discourse they can do so, but they are North Korea and they are China if they do that.”
The 40-year-old father of eight, who has previously said that “Scotland should be very proud” of Donald Trump for electing the Supreme Court justices that overturned the constitutional right to abortion in America, continued by lambasting the reasons behind Nicola Sturgeon’s stance.
He said: “She is the First Minister for Scotland, she does not like 40 Days for Life, she is trying to ban 40 Days for Life. And why? What has happened?
“I’m sure that everybody wants loads of evidence of what could have occurred. Somebody must have shot an abortion doctor, an abortion facility must have been bombed, surely there was assault and battery on the street. No, it’s none of those things. She does not think it’s moral.”
The Texas-based anti-abortion organisation recently launched a 40-day prayer vigil targeting healthcare facilities in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, and Falkirk.
It comes as Green MSP Gillian Mackay prepares to introduce legislation to the Scottish Parliament that would impose 150-metre safe access zones around health facilities that provide abortion or give other sexual health and care advice.
These zones would put an end to the protests that regularly occur directly outside of healthcare facilities in Scotland, which campaigners say cause intimidation and distress to those receiving care.
Carney went on to state that Nicola Sturgeon was a "bigot". He added that anti-abortion activists “don’t need a bureaucrat, government official, whose supposed to be improving the economy, I guess there’s no inflation in Scotland right now".
He went on: “They’re supposed to be doing their job and instead they’re so blinded by their bigotry they’re targeting those they don’t agree with.”
Carney said that his organisation intends to fight the buffer zone legislation legally "because we’re defending freedom of speech in the West.”
