LAST month, the long-awaited buffer zone legislation to keep anti-abortion protesters away from hospitals and clinics was finally enforceable, meaning that appalling scenes such as men shouting at and filming patients at the Sandyford Clinic in Glasgow should now be consigned to history in Scotland.
However, with similar protections set to come into force across the rest of the UK by the end of the month, Scotland has found itself at the centre of a disinformation campaign, with claims buffer zones are being used to persecute Christians for praying in their own homes.
So, where is this coming from? A government letter sent to residences within buffer zones advises that anti-abortion activities “could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the zone”.
This is true of many actions.
You do not have the right to shout racist abuse at people, even from your living room window, and the police may indeed knock on your door if you display hateful sectarian posters on your window or distribute antisemitic materials from your garden.
If your house is within a buffer zone, you may now be committing an offence if you shout at patients entering a clinic or use your garden to display graphic anti-abortion posters.
Most reasonable people understand this perfectly well, but that has not stopped attempts to stir fear. On Thursday, the Christian Concern podcast opened by declaring that “praying at home may be illegal under Scotland’s new safe access zones abortion law”.
In late September, the anti-abortion organisation Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) organised a protest involving members wearing orange jumpsuits and handcuffs outside the Scottish Parliament to protest what a spokesperson called “an attack on the freedom of prayer, freedom of thought”.
The irony that they were perfectly within their rights to hold this protest at that site, and that they had to put on their own handcuffs, seemed lost on them.
The group has since been promoting a “sombre occasion” to mark the introduction of the UK Abortion Act in 1967 (which made abortion legal in the UK under specific circumstances) in George Square, Glasgow.
This involves a rosary and a candlelit procession to a Mass – all of which they are doing perfectly legally. What we have yet to see in Scotland are some of the staged arrests seen in England outside clinics subject to local Public Space Protection Orders.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, director of March for Life UK, was arrested outside a clinic. In footage released by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) UK, she can be seen being given a chance to speak to the police voluntarily, which she refused.
On the About Abortion podcast, with Dave Brennan – who describes Vaughan-Spruce as a friend – he host Dave Brennan congratulates her on “carefully planning” the stunt to test the law.
The ADF has also been supporting Adam Connor Smith, an anti-abortion activist who has posted videos on YouTube of himself outside a clinic talking about abortion being “satanic”.
The US branch of ADF (categorised as a hate group by the non-profit organisation the Southern Poverty Law Centre) claims credit for getting Roe v Wade – the Supreme Court ruling that gave women the right to abortion in America – overturned.
These activists and their supporters are seemingly hoping to cause a panic before women in England and Wales finally get the same protections from their harassment that we have won in Scotland.
