We’ve followed the private security angle over the debate about protests outside abortion clinics, most recently in the February print edition of Professional Security Magazine.
The two latest developments are legal challenges to the PSPOs (public space protection orders) outside a handful of abortion clinics; and an amendment by Labour MP Stella Creasy to a Public Order Bill, voted for 297-110 by MPs last autumn, that would place ‘safe access zones’ of 150m around abortion clinics. Like PSPOs (set by councils, usually for local nuisances such as dog messing and littering), the aim of such buffer zones is to prevent harassing and intimidation of women seeking to access abortion services (and staff).
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH) recently published a report arguing the need for safe access zones to be introduced around UK abortion clinics (the amendment covers England and Wales only – Scotland is having its own debate).
Dr Ranee Thakar, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: “It is unacceptable that there is a postcode lottery where only a very few clinics are protected by Public Spaces Protection Orders. National legislation must be introduced to stop anti-choice organisations imposing stigma, guilt and shame on those accessing, and providing this essential health service. This would not be tolerated for any other area of healthcare.”
The House of Lords having supported the amendment to the Public Order Bill, the amendment is going back through the House of Commons. Some members of the Lords speaking in a debate queried whether there was evidence that the amendment was necessary or proportionate (the RCOG and FSRH report gave numerous examples of threats to patients and staff, such as one member of staff at a Bournemouth clinic saying ‘they have followed me to my car before – shouting ‘murderer’ at me. It just fills you with dread leaving and arriving to work’).
Abortion providers, NHS services, and local authorities have received thousands of accounts of specific instances of this form of harassment, the RCOG and FSRH said, with a substantial increase in reports received since a Home Office review of 2017-18 that decided against any change to the law.
Besides former politicians speaking in the Lords, others speaking were of the calibre of the Bishop of Manchester the Right Rev Dr David Walker, and scientist Lord Winston, who recalled in vitro fertilisation, ‘when my patients were repeatedly harassed and made ill as a result of what was happening to them in the street outside Hammersmith Hospital and in other clinics, not only in mine’. Some speakers spoke of ‘mission creep’, pointing to a difference between physical intimidation and silent prayer, intended to influence someone (which in a recent court case in Birmingham did not lead to a conviction).
The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard now Lord Hogan-Howe spoke at length. On prayer, he said that we all understand why it is particularly sensitive. “Of course nobody wants to ban it, but not everybody finds prayer a supportive thing. I say this with respect to the bishop and as a Christian, but not everybody reacts in the same way. You cannot assume that a prayer expressed on the street is something that everybody wants to receive, and in my view they have every right to resist, or not to be faced with that dilemma.”
He also made the point that ‘the women who are most affected by this do not want to make complaints’, being vulnerable. He said that some acts by those outside clinics have been abhorrent: ‘handing out dolls in various stages of development, handing out protest leaflets that are very explicit on what people are complaining about, and judging people at a point when they have a very difficult decision to make’. Chanting and hymns can be heard inside clinics: “Would you like it, in any medical treatment? It is just not acceptable and something needs to be done.”
For the Public Order Bill in detail, visit the UK Parliament website. See also https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2022/october-2022/lords-considers-public-order-bill/.
Photo by Mark Rowe: silent protest outside an abortion clinic in London, 2019.
