Labour leadership hopeful Yvette Cooper has called for protest-free buffer zones to be established around abortion clinics to stop women facing intimidation and harassment by anti-abortion protesters.
The shadow home secretary said the government should introduce measures to enforce designated areas where anti-abortion protests could not be held, after organisations offering abortion services reported an increase in the number of protests outside clinics.
“Women should never be intimidated or threatened on their way to a healthcare appointment or on their way to work. No matter how strongly protesters feel about abortion themselves, they don’t have the right to harass, intimidate or film women who need to make their own very personal decision with their doctors,” said Cooper.
“Everyone has the right to access legal healthcare, medical advice and support and to have some privacy and space to do so – and that includes abortion services.”
In July, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service confirmed that an abortion clinic had been forced to close “as a direct result of protest activity”. BPAS has reported that staff members and women seeking to terminate pregnancies have been confronted with images of foetuses and protesters have tried to film or photograph them entering and leaving clinics.
“Everyone should be allowed to hold legitimate protests. But they shouldn’t be intimidatory ones right in front of the doors of clinics – we don’t want US style abortion wars here,” said Cooper.
“That’s why we need a new system of buffer zones which can be introduced to move the location of protests or prevent filming of staff and patients if problems arise.”
A number of measures have been taken in areas of the US, Canada and France to stop anti-abortion protests happening directly outside clinics and harassment of patients or staff, though they have not been without controversy.
In June 2014, the US supreme court struck down a Massachusetts law that created no-protest zones on public property surrounding abortion clinics on the grounds that it contravened the first amendment of the US bill of rights which protects free speech.
In the run up to the general election in May, Ed Miliband said he was willing to examine the use of exclusion zones outside abortion clinics after Cooper urged the government to consider the idea, though she did not directly support a buffer zone at the time.
