The Home Office has launched a public consultation on the highly controversial proposed Safe Access Zones around abortion clinics, in England and Wales.
During passage of the Public Order Act 2023, Parliament voted to introduce a law to prohibit protests within 150 metres of an abortion clinic, or hospital that provides abortion services. The Home Office says that it anticipates commencing the relevant section 9 of the Act no later than spring 2024.
The Home Office has launched a consultation seeking views on the non-statutory guidance, which it says will be published so that police have a clear and consistent understanding around enforcement. It will also tell abortion service providers and protesters what is expected under the new law. In a foreword to the consultation document, Home Secretary James Cleverley acknowledges that ‘determining the appropriate balance between competing interests will not always be straightforward’.
The public consultation began on December 11 and will run for six weeks to January 22 (the Home Office apologises that responses made through an online form on day one cannot be considered ‘due to a technical error’ and must be re-sent). Abortion service providers, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare in October complained of the slow official progress after MPs voted 297-110 in October 2022, to introduce safe access zones. Introduced as an amendment to the Public Order Act, the Act became law in May.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said it will be responding to the consultation and will soon be providing guidance to supporters. SPUC has complained that the law may criminalise prayer and has termed it a grotesque intrusion on religious liberty and thought.
Michael Robinson, Executive Director of The Society, said: “We welcome much of the guidance, which clarifies some of the more outrageous implications in the original clause. However, holding open the door to criminalising prayer would be a grotesque intrusion on religious liberty and thought in the UK and the Government must make absolutely clear that this will not happen.
“Freedom of religion is fundamental to our society and regardless of whether you support the draconian plans to introduce buffer zones adjacent to abortion clinics or not, trying to criminalise prayer and thought would be a chilling measure.”
The offence
As the consultation document states, the new law makes it an offence to be ‘influencing a person’s decision to access’ abortion services, ‘obstructing or impeding someone’s access’, or (historically well covered in public order legislation), ‘causing harassment, alarm or distress’. As for whether a protester’s presence while making a silent prayer in the vicinity would add up to an offence, the document says that police should have ‘reasonable grounds’ and ‘an objective factual basis’ for making an arrest. “Prayer within a Safe Access Zone should not automatically be seen as unlawful,” the document says. But, if a praying person’s ‘conduct is also intrusive’, that is ‘likely’ to be an offence under section 9.
Ealing
Meanwhile, in west London, Ealing Council is holding a public consultation until January 15 on whether to renew its Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO, on-street signage pictured from 2018; the order dates from April 2018) which covers MSI Reproductive Choices (Marie Stopes) UK’s abortion clinic in the borough. Before the PSPO, women and others entering the clinic, staff and local residents had to put up with anti-choice behaviours, the clinic says. Abortion clinic harassment continues to occur, and indeed has increased outside many clinics around the UK, especially since the repeal of Roe v Wade in the United States which emboldened anti-choice groups, MSI Reproductive Choices UK says.
Background
PSPOs came in after a 2014 law, which allowed councils to make orders, usually to combat nuisances such as dog fouling, littering, or on-street drinking and offensive behaviour. First Ealing and then a handful of other councils have made PSPOs around abortion clinics after residents and clinic staff have complained of feeling harassed. Ealing points out that the designated area, to the west of the clinic in Mattock Lane, was created to enable the various groups involved to continue their activities subject to restrictions, without restrictions in place outside the area covered by the PSPO. A PSPO usually is made to last for three years and then has to be reviewed; hence Ealing’s review now and in 2021.
Scotland
Scotland is having its own debate over the issue of protest outside clinics. The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Scotland Bill proposes to create “safe access zones” around places providing abortion services. The Bill makes it an offence for people within a safe access zone to act in a way that might prevent a person from getting an abortion, or make them feel harassed while they are accessing abortion services. This might include holding up signs with anti-abortion messages, protesting against abortion, or blocking the entrance to a ‘protected premises’, to use the Bill’s legal term. A Holyrood survey-consultation began in October and closes on December 20.
