No safe space for Pro-Lifers

Oct 12, 2017 by

by Andrew Tettenborn, The Conservative Woman:

One of the stock jokes of the 1950s Ealing comedies involved slightly batty people saying things that everyone else, but not they themselves, knew were entirely inconsistent with each other. If events in the last couple of weeks are anything to go by, the Ealing Labour MP Rupa Huq looks set fair to revive this tradition, though this time the cause is deadly serious.

For some time now, pro-life, mainly Christian, protesters have kept vigil outside a Marie Stopes abortion clinic in one of the leafier parts of Ealing in west London. They make clear what they think of the clinic, and in a fairly original way: handing its clients teddy bears and calling them ‘mum’ on the way in, and suggesting the spiritual fate that awaits them as they emerge. The police decline to put a stop to it, on the understandable and commendable basis that the protesters – who incidentally are matched by a cohort of pro-abortion counter-demonstrators offering support to the institution and its customers – are not actually doing anything illegal.

Ealing Central and Acton MP Rupa Huq, overtly Muslim but simultaneously a pro-abortion activist, disapproves of the line taken by the protesters. That is her right. Much more dangerously, however, she is now taking steps to have them silenced using the heavy hand of the state. A couple of weeks ago she called for Parliament to ban any demonstrations outside clinics as part of its legislative initiative against domestic violence (!) Having been rightly rebuffed, she changed tack, and is now demanding that Ealing Council exercise municipal powers given to it to prevent gatherings of lager louts and drug dealers to create what she charmingly calls ‘safe spaces’ round all abortion clinics where any protests against them are barred by law.

It’s hard to know where to start. For one thing, it’s worth noting that Dr Huq’s view of freedom of speech is clearly rather selective. She wants to suppress anti-abortion demonstrations, despite having previously defended Bradford MP Naz Shah’s right to send poisonous anti-Semitic tweets and also forcefully asserted her right, as part of an alleged silent majority in Ealing, to demonstrate peacefully in favour of abortion on demand.

Read here

Read also: Ealing Council considers ASBO for pro-life vigils and “The most terrible black doom came over me”: Anne Robinson speaks out on her abortion experience, from SPUC

 

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