How do you breach an abortion buffer zone protection order? Why, by being within 150 metres of any part of a building where abortions are carried out. You’re not allowed to cause harassment, alarm or distress to anyone going to them, nor obstruct them from the site. Neither are you allowed to ‘influence’ anyone having or providing an abortion.
And there’s the thing. When Livia Tossici-Bolt stood near a clinic in Bournemouth in March 2023 with a placard saying, ‘Here to talk, if you want’, the clinic and council complained on the basis that the placard and the woman were in breach of the order and a judge, Orla Austin, said Tossici-Bolt ‘lacks insight that her presence could have a detrimental effect on the women attending the clinic, their associates, staff and members of the public.’
Tossici-Bolt says that she wasn’t trying to persuade or harass anyone: she was simply there to talk, and what’s wrong with communicating? ‘Peaceful expression is a fundamental right – no one should be criminalised for harmless offers to converse,’ she said.
Well indeed, and I would be surprised myself if she had simply wanted to pass the time of day with passers-by. If I could put myself in her place I’d have been there to offer women a chance to talk about their decision to have an abortion and to ‘influence’ them not to have it. I would also have wanted to offer them alternatives if they needed it in the way of financial, moral or material support – there are organisations out there that can provide it. That’s because abortion is not like any other form of healthcare because no other form of healthcare entails the destruction of another human life at some stage of pre-natal development. And that, I say, is why the weaselly phrase ‘reproductive healthcare’ is so dishonest, because it’s not about reproduction at all; it’s about ensuring that reproduction doesn’t happen by doing away with the foetus.
That is why people generally stand outside abortion clinics; precisely to ‘influence’ those intending to have an abortion, or to persuade those providing the service to stop.
It doesn’t have quite the same effect if you do it outside the railway station. That occasional nitwit, Lord Sumption, maintains that anti-abortionists can exercise their freedom of speech as much as they like elsewhere, that they can shout their views ‘from the rooftops’. But the thing is, if you want to stop something happening, or make it less likely, you do it where it happens. You protest about nuclear weapons outside a nuclear base; you protest about bad legislation outside the House of Commons.
I can see the point of not allowing protesters to harass or intimidate anyone involved. But standing silently with a placard is not intimidating anyone; it’s offering an alternative. And standing silently outside a clinic, as the pro-lifer Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for, is not an obstruction. Seeing the footage of a PCSO asking this respectable woman, ‘Are you praying?’ was the point at which I thought the country was going to hell.
The judge isn’t wrong, mind you. I expect that somewhere in her heart of hearts Livia TB was hoping to influence someone going to have an abortion if only by offering a chance for them to talk about it. And that’s why the law is wrong and should be repealed.
It’s absolutely right to try to influence someone when they’re going to do something wrong – or must I say, that you consider wrong – so long as you don’t do it violently or aggressively. Livia TB now has to find the costs of the case, some £20,000. She probably won’t be doing that again, will she? And that’s exactly the problem.
Comments
Comment section temporarily unavailable for maintenance.