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.

Men have a right to think what they like. They don't have a right to bully a woman, shame a woman, intimidate a woman or be in any way, shape or form involved in making a decision which affects a woman's right to autonomy over her own body. They, like anyone who has an objection to a woman's right to choose, should be prevented from protesting anywhere near an abortion clinic.

I'm sorry you have to go through any of this Questioning and I wish you well.

Anyone who does this is utter utter scum. It's completely indefensible.

Hope today goes well op. Be kind to yourself xx

Whilst I have every sympathy with the OP, and believe entirely that it is a womans right to choose, I do not want to turn this into a pro or anti debate.

I support the mens right to voice their opinion. I support their right to peaceful protest. If they are handing out leaflets, you can choose not to take one, as people do every day on your local high street. However I should point out that this is for peaceful protest, if they are shouting remarks, or following women to the doorstep of the clinic or insisting that they see the leaflets or calling them names, then no that is not peaceful protest and should not be allowed. In my view it's enshrined in the European convention on Human Rights - Freedom of Speech.

I disagree completly with the idea of an exclusion zone, to be honest I don't worry if it offends someone sensibilities, that is what freedom of speech and freedom of expression is all about. If I want to stand outside Canterbury Cathedral saying God's a C**t, and passing out leaflets I do so, no matter the millions of christians (and others) who disagree. Ban me from saying it, or move me to Hyde park corner and you are stopping a fundemental human right in this country.

The Austerity cuts protest, the Jarrow march, this country has a long history of allowing peaceful protest, why should this be stopped because you are saying men have no right to have an opinion on a womans issue, however misguided they may be.

It's probably easier to quote Voltaire "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." That sums it up for me.

Unfortunately they have the right to peacefully protest.

And people who has the sheer, bare-faced audacity to think they should be involved in decisions strangers make about their own bodies aren't the type to be reasoned with.

Gender shouldn't come in to it, I don't think. A vagina doesn't give you any more right to be an asshole.

Do you think these women who sit outside and protest have more of a right to do so? Why? It's not like they will empathise, clearly.

They're all self-righteous fucking pricks who would rather sit with their flasks and dole out sanctimonious judgement where it's not wanted than actually do some good for the thousands of unwanted babies in the world who are suffering because they were born.

Wankers.

Bobbywash
The difference between you and me is that I think there is a time and place to protest..

So if I'm anti-abortion I shouldn't protest outside an abortion clinic?

So if I'm anti-vivisection I shouldn't protest outside an animal experiment lab?

So if I'm anti-nulcear weapons I shouldn't protest outside Greenham Common?

So i'f I'm anti-capitalist I shouldn't protest outside the City of London?

So if I'm anti-austerity I shouldn't protest outside parliament?

So if I'm anti-cycling death I shouldn't protest on the roadside?

How Can anyone call it peaceful protest though.

It's not.

Standing outside a cathedral saying 'god's a cunt' is hardly the same as standing outside an abortion clinic shouting/banner waving and so on at a woman who is pregnant and just about to have that pregnancy terminated.

To make that argument stand you'd first have to prove that god exists. Then you'd have to prove that the people you were protesting against were your target (they're not, god is) and that they weren't by virtue of being there already vulnerable and distressed. Then you'd have to prove that by saying god's a cunt and preventing people from entering his cathedral you're depriving them of the right to bodily autonomy. This analogy doesn't work for me bobby.

What is peaceful about causing trauma to another person. It's the opposite if trauma

opposite of peaceful

damn phone

"Your agenda is perfectly clear, TBF, Pirate."

You say that, but my agenda is not my position on the ethics of abortion which may be clear to you (and which I've already said I don't want to debate here), and I can certainly understand the idea the OP would be upset by it and don't think OP is BU or anything there.

It's this whole "these people are scum" thing from my fellow commenters that provokes comment. The idea that people can't peacefully protest or petition in a civilized society when their ethical position is that a loss of life could be averted - a serious matter of conscience. That is just when people should do those things, even if it is controversial or upsetting to people, it is admirable for a person to protest on those grounds. I happen to think, for instance, that PETA take borderline mentally unwell positions on things, but when they protest peacefully and put their arguments to adults, I would defend their right to do so even if it upsets people.

I'd like to see a way it could be done where only people who have much of a choice encountered it. but I can't see a way of doing that.

And the women who need to access termination, which is a legal service, have a right to do so without intimidation.

Those who want to protest have the right to do so, without harassing and intimidating vulnerable women. Which is what these protests amount to. Shoving foetus dolls under their noses, showing giant bloody pictures, chasing women. Which is what one of the MSI Belfast escorts told me happened to her on several occassions.

They can exercise their freedom of speech outside stormont, by lobbying politicians and without causing mental damage to women wanting to access a service

YY to right from freedom from harassment.

People have a right to access perfectly legal healthcare without being harassed and intimidated.

The BPAS has resorted to campaigning for a buffer zone around family planning clinics because their requests for the churches who fund these individuals to be harassing others have been ignored.

If individuals want to 'protest' about the legal status of abortion in the UK, they are very free to lobby their MP, marches or rallies or any other type of 'protest'.

Harassing women accessing health care is not a 'protest' as it's not addressing those who hold power or make the laws.

I'm sorry that you had to experience this questioningly.

Take care of yourself.

dreaming the nuclear weapons aren't vulnerable and distressed. The lab animals are already in existence and feel pain and fear - they're the ones who're vulnerable and distressed, not the scientist passing the protesters. The motor car drivers aren't being told what they can or can't do with their own bodies. The comparisons aren't the same.

Any person whose mind they change, that is a human being's life they have saved.

No its not always true.
Also pro-lifers seem to have the view point that if they changed a lady's mind and she continued with the pregnancy then it is problem solved. They seem to make a assumption that when the baby arrives the woman will magically decide that it was for the best. That her whole circumstance will change and that she will automatically fall head over heals in love and any mental health issues will fade into the background.

Life very very rarely works that way.

Also i once had a very strange conversation where someone who was completely pro life regardless of circumstance was completely disgusted at the idea of her friend breeding her dog for puppies when there were so many unwanted dogs in rescue centres already. Yet it was completely acceptable in her eyes to force a woman to give birth for a child to then go into a already overcrowded care system

I'm a strong defender of free speech pirate but freedoms have to be balanced by responsibilities, and by the right of other people to go about their lawful business. I support the right of the anti-choice brigade to protest, but exclusion zones need to be established in order to protect vulnerable women.

If it wouldn't be acceptable to show distasteful posters outside (say) a primary school, then it's not acceptable outside a clinic.

christina you've said what I was trying to much more eloquently.

I always feel a bit like these protests are really protests at all.

A protest to me is intended to make some sort of political point, to say something to the government, to the country. These 'protests' are aimed solely at individual women, protesting their individual choices and it seems like under other circumstances if I got a group of my friends together to yell at someone or harass them in some other way about perfectly legal (or even illegal) choices they made it would be unacceptable.

Hope you're ok OP

As various people have said above, there's a difference between peacefully protesting and intimidation/harassment, and IMO the kind of people who stand outside abortion clinics trying to "change minds" (and/or calling the women going in murderers, waving gory placards of not-actually-aborted-foetuses, etc.) are waaaaaaay over on the "intimidation" side of the line.

"So if I'm anti-abortion I shouldn't protest outside an abortion clinic?"

No, you/they shouldn't, because the abortion clinics have no power to change the law and hence it's a pointless act, other than to intimidate the patients of the clinic.

I'd have no issue with people who dislike safe abortions writing to their MP's or protesting at parliament, but as i've said, the right to access medical assistance for an issue which is nobody else's fucking business trumps the right of people to waste their time harassing people.

I don't think any demonstrations are justified outside of the area under question as this can so easily spill over into intimidation and harassment.

I actually hate these men op on your behalf.

Disgusting scum bags.

Exactly kid well put.

dreaming the difference between an anti-abortion protest and the other anti-protests on your list is that the people that are intimidating women outside family planning clinics aren't simultaneously using legal means of protest ie the demonstrations that you mention, the appeals to change the law to raise these issues with the governing bodies of this country.

As such, this behaviour isn't a 'protest' - it's intimidating and harassment.