Anti- abortion activists filming patients outside a sexual health clinic can’t be tolerated.
Campaigners have been harassing patients exercising their legal and human right to vital health services.
Two men targeted Glasgow’s Sandyford Clinic in what has become a relentless and despicable hate campaign.
One quoted Bible passages and wore a body camera on his chest. Another held up signs which read, “Babies are murdered here” and, “Abortion is murder. Thou shalt not murder.”
They should stop this sinister intimidation. As well as abortion services, the clinic offers help related to HIV, contraception, menopause, sexually transmitted diseases and rape counselling.
Patients accessing these services have the right to confidentiality and to be able to attend the clinic without being harassed and frightened.
The Scottish Government says it supports the introduction of buffer zones and needs to fast track legislation to make them happen as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, women’s health minister Maree Todd has inferred doctors and other health professionals should protect women from the anti-abortion zealots.
It is not the job of medical workers to act as security guards.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has convened a summit on June 27 to discuss abortion rights issues – and buffer zones must be at the top of the agenda.
In the days before legislation made terminations permissible, women died from unsafe, backstreet abortions and their right to choose is a fundamental gender equality issue.
If these anti-abortionists want to protest, they must be forced to do so from a distance, away from patients who have every right to be safe.
The fool Monty
Boris Johnson’s refusal to quit brings shame on him and the Government he tries to lead.
He has become an object of mockery after more than 40% of his Tory colleagues voted to dump him.
The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford got it right when he compared the PM to “The Black Knight”, a famous Monty Python character who had his hands and legs chopped off after a fight but dismissed the wounds as a “scratch”.
Johnson is trying to pretend the brutal blow he was dealt by colleagues can somehow be shrugged off.
But it is another Python scene that accurately depicts our ludicrous PM.
In the Dead Parrot sketch, disgruntled John Cleese rages at a shopkeeper who refuses to accept the bird he sold is dead.
“This is an ex-parrot,” Cleese memorably declared.
Johnson is still PM in name but in reality is dead in the water.
