With the reversal of Roe versus Wade in the United States, abortion is very much back in the news. Here in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon responded to developments in America by giving the government’s backing to a bill that would introduce buffer zones, criminalising any form of vigil or protest outside abortion clinics.
However as the First Minister has acknowledged, such legislation would need to be ‘capable of withstanding any human rights challenge’ – a tacit acknowledgement that it would potentially clash with rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of conscience, all protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.
Sturgeon has framed this as being about ‘women’s rights to access healthcare without intimidation and harassment’. However as the First Minister well knows, intimidating or harassing a person anywhere is already a criminal offence, and so creating buffer zones would only target those who are peacefully – and often silently – offering help to vulnerable women. Indeed, through Freedom of Information requests by Compassion Scotland (a group of women campaigning against buffer zones), Police Scotland have revealed that there were no recorded incidents of intimidation or harassment at any of 13 different locations across Scotland from 2016-2019 (the most recent period for which there are statistics).
Women are certainly being intimidated however – recent BBC research shows that 15% of women have experienced pressure to terminate a pregnancy when they did not want to. Buffer zones would criminalise those who want to offer emotional and practical support to those women. A 2020 investigation found 10 pages of mumsnet posts by women seeking help after feeling coerced by their male partners to undergo an abortion. Even if they haven’t experienced coercion, many women attend an abortion clinic because they feel they have no other choice. Eleven years ago Alina Dulgheriu was single, pregnant and facing unemployment. She received a leaflet outside an abortion clinic offering help to obtain housing, as well as a pram, cot and nappies – and chose to keep her baby, a girl called Sarah. She says: ‘I didn’t sleep the night before my appointment at Marie Stopes. Some would say I had ‘chosen’ abortion. I wanted to keep her, but I didn’t know how. What could I do?’ What does she think about taking that option for women in her position to be given such help today? ‘Removing the option to receive help is deeply patronising, assuming that we can’t make a decision for ourselves’.
In fact, it’s almost laughable to categorise those who oppose abortion as the aggressors who others need protected against. The only incident of harassment or intimidation disclosed through Compassion Scotland’s Freedom of Information requests was against a protestor. In the days after the Roe v. Wade reversal, crisis pregnancy centres seeking to help vulnerable women in places such as Portland were firebombed. When SNP politician John Mason spoke out in defence of anti-abortion vigils outside Glasgow hospitals in May, Labour leader Anas Sarwar called for party discipline against him.
So why are Christians willing to stick their heads above the parapet? Ultimately it’s because we believe that life begins at conception – and is not ours to take. The Bible’s claim ‘you knit me together in my mother’s womb’ (Psalm 139:13) inevitably clashes with the slogan ‘my body my choice’.
Indeed, as journalist Olivia Utley recently pointed out, the fact that we don’t have abortion up until birth means that implicit in all abortion laws is the recognition that, at some point, deliberately ending a pregnancy would be wrong. Those who oppose abortion simply disagree with others about the timing of it. 24 weeks is ultimately an arbitrary limit, because whether a baby could survive outside the womb - or whether it’s wanted or not - doesn’t fundamentally change what it is.
Even aside from that however, the logic of ‘my body, my choice’ doesn’t hold true in other areas of life; try driving past a police car with no seat belt on, or going into the supermarket naked. In fact, Christians wholesale reject the idea that our bodies are our own – to be a follower of Jesus is to realise ‘you are not your own, you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God with your body’ (1 Corinthians 6:20).
The introduction of buffer zones would criminalise those wanting to offer hope to vulnerable women who feel they have nowhere else to turn. There aren’t always easy answers, but women in those situations need to know that they have a choice. And – however scary – it is always possible to ‘choose life’ (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 28 July 2022
The Consultation for the new bill ends on 6th August - Compassion Scotland have put together some guidance for responding to it