Hansard

On behalf of the Green Party group, I congratulate our colleague and friend Gillian Mackay on introducing the bill to the Parliament, and I congratulate all the campaigners and health professionals who have fought for so long for this moment.

I also thank colleagues on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee for allowing me to participate in stage 1 proceedings, even though I missed the Finance and Public Administration Committee’s field trip to a quarry in order to do so.

Another person whom I want to thank on behalf of the Scottish Greens is our former Northern Ireland Green colleague Clare Bailey, who passed the UK’s first legislation on safe access zones. So much of what is now being achieved in Scotland, England and Wales is because of her work in Northern Ireland.

Every Scottish Green MSP will, of course, vote for our colleague Gillian Mackay’s bill today. Access to healthcare is a fundamental right. However, at this point in time, a woman’s right to access reproductive healthcare in Scotland is being compromised by anti-abortion protests. Anyone is free to hold an anti-abortion point of view—freedom of thought is absolute—but our right to manifest our views is not absolute and, in this case, does not trump a woman’s right to access healthcare.

The bill poses a question of how we balance rights. Ultimately, it will place a small restriction on the right to protest and religious expression in order to allow others to fully exercise their right to healthcare. I sincerely believe that it is a small restriction, because the bill will not ban protest—it will purely ban proximity when protesting.

Restrictions based on proximity already exist. Someone cannot protest abortion in the waiting room of a hospital or inside the building at all. We are not having that argument. The bill is about the extent to which we set limits on proximity, because the limits that currently exist are clearly not sufficient. That does not mean that we should create such restrictions lightly. Any restriction on rights should be carefully considered and should go only as far as is necessary to achieve balance.

The reason why I believe that the restriction in the bill is small is that I do not believe that proximity is essential for those who want to express anti-abortion views. I posed that argument to witnesses who engaged in or supported what they described as anti-abortion or pro-life vigils. Prayer can absolutely be a form of protest. I say that as someone whose faith is deeply important to me. However, for the purpose of this argument, I will accept their premise that they are engaging in prayer, not protest, because I want to talk about the Christian theological dimension.

Not all of the people at such vigils are Christians, but the vast majority are, as are those who gave evidence to us, and it is important to understand the motivation of those engaging in behaviour that we are seeking to prevent or displace. Bishop Keenan, from the Catholic church, explained the importance of prayer to Christians—I agree—but his evidence and that of others strayed between prayer and preaching, which engage different rights and different questions of faith.

Christians are called to spread what we consider to be the good news, but we are explicitly not called to pray performatively in public. Jesus is really specific about that. Just before introducing the Lord’s prayer, he said:

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

That is in Matthew, chapter 6, for anybody who wants to do a bit of further reading. Last week, the Presiding Officer was presented with a lovely new parliamentary Bible, which, I am sure, she would lend to other members.

When Jesus said that those who pray for others to see them have already received their reward in full, he was making the point that such prayer is directed towards those around them, not towards God. The reward is the attention of other people, and he condemns that.

The point about whom prayer is directed towards is a critical legal question. Praying to God, either individually or as a group, does not require proximity to what or whom is being prayed for. I am not saying that proximity is never important and has no value, but, in this case, proximity is clearly intended to influence the outcome—in other words, to persuade or intimidate women into not having an abortion. At that point, you are clearly impacting someone else’s ability to exercise their rights. Your rights, therefore, need to be balanced against theirs. Quite obviously, you cannot access abortion services somewhere other than at an abortion service provider, but you can pray, protest and preach elsewhere, including just up the road.

Restrictions on rights, even to achieve balance with other rights, are significant enough to usually warrant on-going scrutiny. The Health, Social Care and Sport Committee recommended amending the bill to include provisions for post-legislative scrutiny, and I welcome Gillian Mackay’s commitment to lodge such amendments at stage 2.

Despite the Abortion Act 1967 having come into force across the UK almost 60 years ago, this is still a deeply politicised area of healthcare. The organisations that put together anti-abortion protests in Scotland have been repeatedly found to spread dangerously false claims, including that abortion increases the chance of getting breast cancer, which is utterly false. Those organisations say that both sides of the debate must be heard. Clearly, there are two well-understood sides of the moral argument, but the provision of health advice is for healthcare professionals. It is not a space for political debate—that can and does take place elsewhere.

The bill is an opportunity for Parliament to listen to women who have sought abortion and have been profoundly affected by protests, and to the other patients, service users, families, relatives, chaplains, hospital staff and others who have also been affected. As Gillian Mackay and others have said, we are not debating abortion today. I recognise that some deeply disagree, but public opinion and that of Parliament are settled on the issue. The Abortion Act 1967 has been in place for almost 60 years, and support for women’s bodily autonomy has only increased since then. However, a small number of those who oppose that are actively attempting to compromise women’s ability to exercise a hard-fought-for right. Those are creeping attempts to bring the tactics of American culture wars to Scotland.

Today, we have the opportunity to reject those attempts, to protect women who are seeking abortion and to agree to the principle that Scotland should set up safe access zones around our abortion clinics.