To think men have no right to stand outside abortion clinics and do this.

[QuestioningStuff]

Posted before about my pregnancy. I am having a termination today. This is not a decision I've made lightly.

I've arrived at the clinic and there is a middle aged man and his young teen son standing outside with camp chairs and flasks. Putting up awful pictures and signs. Trying to hand out leaflets.

I think women who do this are also scum but how on earth could a man think he has any right to do this? Turn up at a place where women are at their most scared and vulnerable and try to bully them?

It's really really upset me. I hate them so much right now.

I want to go and tell them exactly what I think of them but don't think that would be helpful at this time.

"Given the hate spewed from so many on those site towards men, it's unsure to me how children are conceived in the first place. These same women who have sons, who have no respect for the male sex"

Please could you explain what you mean by this?

Oh don't engage. Pointless.

Yeah well, lunatic fundamentalism comes in all sorts of flavours, and not many of them are very nice.

On a nicer note, and for those who are not pro abortion on compassionate/religious grounds, but don't want to go around confronting/hectoring random women on their way to getting deeply personal medical treatment with unknown (to you) circumstances and unknown (to you) consequences, there are apparently quite regular prayer vigils and things held. I shan't link them here, I suppose someone else might signpost those.

Ignore it BetrandRussell, trolls gonna troll!

I do think they have the right to protest. I say that with a heavy heart.

I don't agree with them and I think many people's motives are not rooted in concern for unborn 'children'.

But I have protested and picketed and might do so in the future and I would not like that right to be withdrawn by an exclusion zone.

As posters have pointed out; they already exist and I don't want them to spread.

So reluctantly I'm going to have to extend it to them. But I don't want to give them an easy ride and there's plenty of legislation for the police to deal with it if they want.

I don't know how the police go about it in practice but I'd say that legislation covering trade union picketing is probably a start.

There are no more than six pickets. You do not block the entrance. You are allowed to engage people in conversation but not to harass.

After that, laws on public order should apply. If you alarm, harass and distress someone with word or deed, you should be arrested and possibly charged. I believe that clause is part of a Public Order Act passed in 1986 or thereabouts and was a reaction to NUM pickets upsetting the police during the Miners' Strike two years earlier.

At least one judge has dismissed a charge brought against protesters under that Act saying that the police are expected to be more robust.

But I expect judges to be a lot more sympathetic to people exercising their legal right to access a medical facility, especially at a vulnerable time.

I'd say the law might cover continued unwanted conversation, verbal abuse and display of distressing images.

Of course they have a right to feel how they do, and the right to protest peacefully.

I don't agree. These men have no right to "feel" anything about OP's or any other woman's choice about her body. And they are not "protesting peacefully", they are harassing women who are making choices that are legal.

I am quite sure that if it were men doing something that were a difficult personal choice - think, for example, having a vasectomy - and people were wanting to "protest" about it right outside the place that it is done, these "protestors" would be moved on rather swiftly.

It is a complete nonsense that people have a "right" to express themselves in such a way that is intimidating and upsetting women.

In other circumstances, harassing people is not allowed:

www.problemneighbours.co.uk/protection-from-harassment.html

I think that the kind of thing OP experienced today should be something that the police should be able to take action to prevent, under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997

How about Mumsnet makes a statement on this to try to get things changed using current legislation?

Is anyone pro abortion? That's a stupid word. It's pro choice.

How about Mumsnet makes a statement on this to try to get things changed using current legislation?

I would fully support that.

AS the person who said that it makes no difference whether they're male or female on the initial page, let me expand.

I am very much pro abortion. There are far too many unwanted children in the world, and indeed in this country, without bringing more in.

I would imagine it is a harrowing and scary experience for a woman, and totally the wrong place for anyone, of either sex to protest.

However, my point was anyone is free to have an opinion and protest (in a better place) about something, whatever sex they are. Yes the woman carries the child, and yes the woman should ALWAYS have the say over whether the child is born, however I can also see it from the point of the men that perhaps didn't want them to have an abortion, and I believe they are entitled to an opinion.

I am quite sure that if it were men doing something that were a difficult personal choice - think, for example, having a vasectomy - and people were wanting to "protest" about it right outside the place that it is done, these "protestors" would be moved on rather swiftly.

I don't think that's true. I think the police would leave them to it unless they were committing a public order offence.

I completely agree though that hardly anyone would be exercised to protest, even though there's a Biblical passage about the evils or spilling your seed, which I guess could be construed as wilfully destroying it.

If they did, they'd be regarded as fanatics but also also dismissed as harmless eccentrics - I think I agree with you there.

Sadly, some of the extremists against abortion - male and female - are seen as people who have their hearts in the right place but who get a bit carried away sometimes.

I agreee with you OP. I hope you're ok. A man can't begin to comprehend the responsibility because he can walk away, or co-parent. Basically he can offer a little bit of parenting (if any) and he's a hero and his career is uninterrupted.

+1 pirate - I agree with you.

If a person believes that abortion is morally wrong it must be incredibly difficult for them to sit outside an abortion clinic and protest peacefully.

I'm very relieved that we all have the right to assemble and protest peacefully against things that we believe are wrong (whether or not those things are currently legal).

"I'm very relieved that we all have the right to assemble and protest peacefully against things that we believe are wrong (whether or not those things are currently legal)."

Regardless of the effect on other people?

If a person believes that abortion is morally wrong it must be incredibly difficult for them to sit outside an abortion clinic and protest peacefully.

And what? It's acceptable for them to harass people because they're unable and unwilling to keep their feelings in check?

"If a person believes that abortion is morally wrong it must be incredibly difficult for them to sit outside an abortion clinic and protest peacefully"

Then in that case they shouldn't be sat outside an abortion clinic should they? We have the right to protest peacefully but harassing vulnerable women outside an abortion clinic is not a protest nor is it peaceful.

FoodPorn Whether it's abortion or anything else, outside a clinic or anywhere else, any right to protest is the right to protest peacefully. If they can't manage that - and assuming that they are to be allowed to protest outside a clinic, which I would rather did not happen - if they find it too difficult to be peaceful they have got to stay away.

I think anyone who wishes to protest outside an abortion clinic should be forced to shadow a child protection social worker for a week.

People sat outside clinical aren't protesting, though.

They're harassing and intimidating individuals.

I think those from the Catholic Church who want to sit outside family planning clinics should be forced to spend time with some of the thousands of people abused within the Catholic Church.

Then they can tall about the church's attitudes to sanctity of life.

Harassment is going to upset someone regardless of whether they feel guilt or not. I had a termination many years ago - I felt no guilt before or after - but if someone had come up to me outside the clinic 'protesting' I would have been very pissed off.

And the protestors' right to protest does not trump the woman's right to have a perfectly legal medical procedure without being harassed by some bellend.

Besides the OP was about men protesting outside a clinic, not about the ethics of abortion. Although some posters have obviously got a little confused.

'Putting up awful pictures'- that must be intimidation by some legal definition? What if I put horrendous FGM pics up on the railings of an Embassy of a country which condones it? Would action be taken swiftly or what?

if it was a picture of a microscopic blob of cells, reeky, then you maybe would have a point. but it's not is it? no, no, it's not. funny that.

It wouldn't have bothered me - especially as many of those pictures are total bollocks anyway. I was fortunate in that the decision was an easy one for me - I was slightly nervous but only because I had never had a GA. But what about those mentioned upthread who are already emotional, who may be in a DA situation etc, have found the decision painful? Presumably they don't matter.