Meeting of the Parliament 30 April 2024
This is a very important debate, and I thank Gillian Mackay for all her work, as well as her office, her bill team and the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, for getting us to this crucial stage.
Peaceful protest is a key principle of our democracy, and I know that everyone across the chamber agrees with that. However, protests targeted at women trying to access healthcare when they are at their most vulnerable are simply unacceptable and downright sinister. Praying for the souls of unborn children is a human right, and no one is arguing against that, but if those protests or peaceful prayer are located outside the entrance to a hospital, that moves the dial massively. I believe that those so-called vigils amount to the targeted harassment and intimidation of women. I understand that the protesters do not see it as that, but that is most certainly the effect on women entering clinics.
Singing, chanting and praying outside hospitals and abortion clinics throughout Scotland, with people often carrying lurid pictures, is designed to create distress. That is not freedom of expression; it is passive aggression at its worst, designed to heap blame on women and to emotionally blackmail them into feeling guilty and ashamed. On some occasions, the protesters distribute false medical information to suit their argument, and some of them target passers-by and patients by shouting and accusing them of accessing abortion services. That is cruel, unkind and unnecessary, not only to the women who are accessing healthcare, but to the healthcare workers.
Rape Crisis Scotland has stated:
“Anti-abortion protests outside clinics have a clinical, emotional and psychological impact. The activities of anti-abortion protesters cause distress and have the potential to cause trauma to those accessing abortion services.”
The tactics that are deployed involve targeting people attending the clinics,
“passing out distressing information in leaflets and pictures and displaying such messages on banners.”
Those actions may cause them
“to defer their treatment or purchase illegal abortion pills online from unregulated providers.”
That impact will be particularly acute for survivors of rape.