Scotland could enact the world’s most extreme buffer zone to protect abortion clinics

Apr 26, 2024 by Dave Doveton

By Ann Farmer, Mercator.

The Scottish Parliament is considering “the world’s most extreme buffer zone law”. Gillian MacKay MSP’s Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill would impose 200-metre zones around hospitals and clinics (and potentially abortion pill-dispensing GP centres and pharmacies) in which pro-life activity, including silent vigils, is banned.

That’s about the length of two football fields.

In England and Wales 150-metre zones have been legalised, and 100 metres in Northern Ireland. Scotland’s law is draconian.

Within the Scottish zones – and just outside – actions likely to exert influence regarding abortion would be forbidden, including signs visible from within the zones, and private conversations heard there.

A Scottish Parliament Policy Memorandum speaks of distress caused by anti-abortion campaigners but it fails to describe the distressing and indeed lethal process of abortion. It emphasises the need to protect “healthcare professionals”, even though harassment is already illegal. It stresses the need for healthcare for women suffering sexual violence and rape, but abortion is not some sort of cure for sexual violence — rather it provides protection for rapists and abusers.

The Memorandum acknowledges the zones’ impact on the right to thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression, assembly and association. But it insists with Pollyannish optimism that the law will be selectively applied and that the European Court of Human Rights protects the privacy of clinic users and staff. It claims women have the right to access abortion like “any other form of medical treatment” — although this “medical treatment” involves killing.

It seems Scotland is aiming for an even more aggressive law, while seeing these zones, with their blanket ban on free expression, as “safe means of offering protection” – but not to babies.

Read here.