Pro-choice campaigners are urging all Scottish National party leadership candidates to commit to accelerating the imposition of protest-free buffer zones around abortion clinics, as healthcare professionals describe the “remorseless” impact of anti-choice activity on their working lives. Amid growing concern that Scotland is trailing behind the rest of the UK, after safe access zones passed their final parliamentary hurdle in the Commons last week, there was a protest and counter-protest outside the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow at the weekend. The clinic offers a range of services including abortion, support for sexual assault victims and transgender healthcare. Members of the Scottish Family party – which is led by the former Ukip member Richard Lucas – carried out a mock “bricking up” of the entrance to the clinic. Carrying placards reading “unborn lives matter”, “keep trans ideology out of our schools” and “a man can’t become a woman”, speakers described abortion as “evil” and “wicked” to the modest group of protesters. A much larger crowd joined an adjacent counter-protest, with people dancing and singing Bonnie Tyler and Spice Girls hits on a karaoke machine.
Audrey Brown, a consultant in sexual and reproductive healthcare who worked at the Sandyford until her retirement last December, told the Guardian: “Whenever the protests take place they generate a sense of anxiety about attending a clinic. They were also unpredictable – you could be in the middle of a consultation with a patient and then be interrupted by a rammy [fight] outside your window.” Dr Greg Irwin, a consultant paediatric radiologist who works at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth university hospital where the 40 Days for Life campaign is holding its daily Lent protest, said: “The protests are remorseless at the moment, and for staff it’s like a non-stop bludgeoning effect. Every single patient coming into the hospital is caught up in it. “To be leap-frogged by England, Wales and Northern Ireland [in creating buffer zones] is remarkable and should be a kick in the pants for the Scottish government,” Irwin continued, adding that he was “extremely concerned” about the outcome of the SNP leadership contest. All three candidates to succeed Nicola Sturgeon have indicated they are willing to work with the Scottish Greens MSP Gillian Mackay, who is championing a Holyrood member’s bill that would set up “safe access zones” around healthcare settings that provide abortion services. But there are significant differences between the three, according to Lucy Grieve, of Back Off Scotland, a group formed in 2020 to deter anti-abortion protests and prayer vigils around healthcare services. Ash Regan and Humza Yousaf, the health secretary, have pledged to support Mackay’s bill entirely, to improve services to stop so many women being forced to travel to England for later-term procedures, and to remove abortion care from the criminal law – Yousaf aiming to do so by the end of this parliament, in 2026. Kate Forbes told Back Off Scotland she would work with Mackay on buffer zones but wanted a “balanced” bill that was consistent with European convention on human rights obligations. She agreed that “healthcare services should be offered as close to home as is feasibly possible”, and said she would not “interfere” with current abortion law. Grieve said: “She says that her faith won’t influence policymaking but this is a very clear example of where it will – and that’s simply not good enough.” Open Democracy revealed last month that Forbes had a Holyrood internship funded by an anti-abortion lobby group, and later made an anti-abortion statement at a national prayer breakfast. Asked on Channel 4’s leaders’ debate last Thursday whether her desire for “balance” on buffer zones included provision for prayer vigils, she insisted her rivals should “accept my word when I say that I will uphold those legal protections and support buffer zones”. Rachael Clarke, the chief of staff at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said last week’s Commons vote to introduce safe access – or buffer – zones in England and Wales shone a renewed light on the slow progress in Scotland. Last December, the supreme court ruled that Northern Ireland could go ahead with similar plans without interfering with EHRC rights. Clarke said: “With a new first minister soon to be in place, women need a firm parliamentary timeline for Gillian Mackay’s bill, and a clear understanding from government that any attempt to ‘balance’ the rights of women and the rights of anti-abortion groups at the gate of abortion clinics and hospitals would leave Scotland far behind the rest of the UK.”