I had spent my life so far in blissful ignorance of a woman called Gillian Mackay. I mean, I knew she existed – but how she existed and what she did with her existence did not impinge because she was safely sequestered in that booby hatch of methadone, lady-men, corruption and pies which we know as ‘Scotland’ and thus would have no jurisdiction over my life. This is, I grant, a solipsistic attitude to have taken – and I realise that now it has been shattered.
A new and unwanted homunculus has slipped into my life, then, and I fear it is time to talk about the smirking, pudding-faced Green MSP on account of her member’s bill, The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scot-land), which has been enacted. It is not just me who is waking up to Gillian, but the American Vice-President J.D. Vance as well.
Mackay’s bill bans people from protesting within 200 metres of an abortion clinic. It bans them from not protesting, too: just standing 200 metres from an abortion clinic is enough to bring you to the attention of the law. Mackay has no qualms about the severity of the law and said: ‘This kind of intimidation has no place in a modern or progressive Scotland. Everybody deserves to have access to healthcare without harassment.’ By intimidation she means standing silently, perhaps with a placard, perhaps without.
It was Mackay’s bill to which Vance referred when he addressed European leaders at that security conference in Munich. Vance made the outlandish claim that the Scottish government had written to people who lived near the clinic warning them that they were not allowed to pray inside their own homes, for fear of offending women gaily passing by on their way to the abortion clinic. Absurd misinformation, Mackay responded, adding that Vance was an ‘eejit’.
I assumed, likewise, that Vance had got it wrong, or was overstating the case – but nope, not at all. The government did write to the people who lived near abortion clinics to tell them what they could and could not do within their own homes. They could not hold up placards, for example. They could not voice their objections to abortion. But what about praying? Yup, it seems there were prohibitions on this too, just as Vance had alleged. When asked if ‘performative prayer’ with ‘clasped hands’, visible from a window, could be prosecuted, Mackay responded: ‘Well, that depends on who’s passing by the window…’
So Vance hadn’t got it wrong, although he had perhaps not grasped the full lunacy of the legislation, which seems to have taken its inspiration from Erwin Schrödinger’s experiment, involving a cat in a box, to demonstrate the weirdness of wave/particle duality. You may pray in your own home, but not if someone sees you praying. Then you’ll be for it. I don’t know if there is any prohibition on celebrating women trundling along to their termination appointments, by the way, perhaps by banging saucepans together and shouting: ‘Go girl!’
It is odious legislation, but not a million miles worse than that which pertains south of the border. Here the asinine safe zone is admittedly shorter – 150 metres – but the prohibitions are no less severe. Within a ‘safe access zone’, it’s a criminal offence to intentionally or recklessly influence, obstruct or cause harassment, alarm or distress to anyone accessing, providing or facilitating abortion services. Of course, you might be accused of occasioning distress simply by standing there, by existing.
You may pray in your own home, but not if someone sees you praying. Then you’ll be for it
This is what happened to Livia Tossici-Bolt, aged 64, who had a placard bearing the incendiary and threatening message: ‘Here to talk, if you want.’ In what possible sense does that meet the criteria outlined above? She was found guilty, however, and copped a two-year conditional discharge with an order to pay £20,000 costs, despite having argued that she was not there to prevent the women proceeding with their terminations: ‘I was there to listen to them. Not that I was there to convince them or change minds or not.’
The reason governments in Edinburgh and Westminster have got away with such an assault on freedom of speech is that the anti-abortionists have a deeply unfashionable cause. An appetite for abortions on demand, perhaps even if you are not pregnant, has been a rallying cry of the feminist movement for decades and nobody dare gainsay them. Further, some of those small silos of protestors who can be relied upon to turn out to demand freedom of speech be observed are not present when it comes to abortion.
The Spiked lot, for example, have been marvellously vigilant on the subject of free speech – but the problem is, they also love abortions. Likewise the Terf brigade – who have championed freedom of speech when it comes to calling a bloke in a dress a bloke – suddenly clam up when the subject turns to abortion. Even the excellent Free Speech Union had, until very recently, done nothing whatsoever about this restriction on what we can say and even what we can visibly think regarding abortion.
And so the rest of us probably line up behind the likes of that former judge Lord Sumption, who delivered his remarkably inane verdict on the issue last week. Safe access zones were not an infraction of one’s right to free speech, because that freedom could be enjoyed beyond the safe access zone. This is so dim-witted as to be nigh hilarious. What possible purpose is there for freedom of speech if that speech is legally denied an audience? And yet there are precious few voices who would dare to challenge this shallow conviction. If the war against hyperliberal overreach is, at last, beginning to be won, it will be anti-abortion campaigners who will be last in line for the legal redress which they surely deserve.
Comments
Comment section temporarily unavailable for maintenance.