An anti-abortion silent campaigner was convicted under a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) in place around the BPAS abortion clinic in Bournemouth. The judge ruled that the defendant ‘was within the safe zone, that she was capable of being seen by those in the area, that she was holding visible signage pointing towards the clinic and that this would have been perceptible to an observer’.
The judge said: “Although she refers to her wish to simply encourage conversation to address the widespread problem of loneliness, the precise location of her attendance was plainly important to the defendant. She could have chosen a different location to display her signage, particularly given that she herself acknowledges that loneliness is “everywhere”. She was given the opportunity to leave on several occasions but chose to refuse to do so.”
The judge also concluded that the defendant lacked ‘insight into the fact that her presence in the circumstances described could have a detrimental impact upon women attending the clinic, their associates, the staff, and members of the public’. The case centred on body worn video and transcripts of audio as taken by the council’s uniformed CSAS (community safety accreditation scheme) officers, featured in the June 2022 edition of Professional Security Magazine.
The council asked for its costs, put at £64,000; the judge assessed that the defendant must pay a contribution of £20,000. Acting for the council at Poole Magistrates Court were Cornerstone Barristers. The PSPO dated from October 2022; it was subject to legal challenge by this defendant in October 2023; the case before the court arose from two days in March 2023. The defendant was found guilty under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 which covers PSPO; she was given a two-year conditional discharge.
Comment
For the anti-abortion charity Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), condemned the verdict as ‘blatant censorship’. The SPUC has campaigned against PSPOs for years on the grounds of freedom of speech. Heidi Stewart, CEO of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, welcomed the verdict. She said: “The clinic in Bournemouth has been subjected to many years of anti-abortion protests which resulted in more than 500 reports of harassment before this local safe access zone was brought into force. This case was never about global politics but about the simple ability of women to access legal healthcare free from harassment.
“It is up to the police and judicial system to determine whether individuals have broken the law. I, meanwhile, stand shoulder to shoulder with our staff who work so tirelessly to protect our patients from the impact of anti-abortion harassment outside the clinic gate.”
Background
Bournemouth is one of a handful of councils (Ealing was the first, in 2018, pictured), that made a PSPO applying specifically to protests outside abortion clinics; most PSPOs are for nuisances such as littering and dog fouling. Similarly, the Labour Government in October 2024 made ‘safe access buffer zones’ around abortion clinics and hospitals, that Home Office Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips described as ‘vital protections’, in line with similar zones in Scotland made by the Holyrood Parliament. The England and Wales ‘zone’ is 150m, Scotland’s ‘Safe Access Zones‘ that came into force in September 2024, 200m.
