Buffer zone around Ealing abortion clinic?

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www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43669652

Just wondering what people think especially in light of discussions on here about free speech.

Also abortive is another area where we change our language according to our beliefs (so I will talk about “ending the pregnancy”, a Catholic may talk about “keeping the baby” and neither of those terms are really accurate I suppose...but HCP adapt them according to patient)

Any updates about a challenge? Local authorities are not awash with money so any challenge could be very difficult for them.

They are out there today - the Safe Zone can't be imposed until the minutes of Tuesdays meeting are published (likely to be this Friday) then after the statutory five day call in period has passed the date would be Monday, 23 April 2018 fo it to come in to force. However, if there is a legal challenge everything will stop while it goes to court!

The area that is designated for 'protesters' is in sight of the clinic but people can get in and out of the gates without having to pass it. Other criteria have been introduced such as a limit of written material and pictures being of A3 size and the banning of approaching people - they can only talk to people who approach them for discussion.

Some people are concerned about the location and the freedoms allowed, but there will be a review after 6 months to see how things are panning out.

No one is saying that the protesters are not allowed their beliefs or to state their views. It is the context in which they are choosing to to express their views which I think shifts this from being open debate to actual intimidation and harassment of vulnerable women. They deliberately target women, approaching them, trying to speak to them.

Absolutely spot on. It is a situation where the women is very vulnerable - lets face it few people enter into abortions lightly, it is highly emotional. So I don't see it as problematic to allow the protests but not 'in the faces' of the women using the clinic (so to speak). As other posters have said it moves out of the realms of free speech in this situation into the realms of harassment and targeting of women.

No one is saying that the protesters are not allowed their beliefs or to state their views. It is the context in which they are choosing to to express their views which I think shifts this from being open debate to actual intimidation and harassment of vulnerable women. They deliberately target women, approaching them, trying to speak to them.

Exactly. I think they should be allowed to protest outside the Marie Stopes head office and approach whomever they like with whatever material they like.

But they are intimidating vulnerable women.

Two different things.

I had hoped never to see the day when this American horror show hits our shores, but I'm heartbroken to see it has.

There are so many different reasons why women have abortions but most if not all of the religious fanatics who actually picket an abortion service really don't care about any of them.

Many of them believe, as a mysoginist Scottish late night radio host once put it, that these women are mostly "lazy slags who couldn't keep their legs together", using abortion as birth control.

It's a persistent myth this about abortion as birth control, about the women who saunter in, get their problem taken care of and then happily go about their day. It's nothing like what happens, but when you take sides against the women in this, demonising them must help in fuelling your anger.

I once spoke to a lady who lived in a US state where if your doctors recommended a termination for medical reasons, you had to go and apply to the council for permission and this was decided in an open community meeting.

Her application was denied, she was told that it'd be far better for her to carry the baby to term and donate its organs (this baby was not viable and going to die straight after birth).

A fucking community meeting full of idiots who didn't even read her medical file detailing how messed up this fetus was - not a single organ that had formed normally, nothing you could donate.

They didn't care. Abortion is evil.

Another one whose baby had died told me her only option was to attend an abortion clinic in the US coz that was the only way in her state to end a pregnancy. No doctor would do it outside of one.

She was incredibly distraught, but having to go through the picket line and get called horrible names by these people infuriated her. She exploded all over them "my baby is already dead you ....!

They didn't give a shit. When she came back out, she said, the abuse started all over again.

I don't hate a lot of people. But I do hate these ones.

OK!

Only Parliament can change the law allowing abortion under strict conditions in Britain (not NI). Anti choice activists are free to protest outside the Westminster Parliament if they want to stop abortion or use their freedom of speech to lobby for that.

Anti choice protesters know where laws come from. Yet their tactic is harassing, filming and seeking to intimidate women individually. I wonder what the motivation for that could be?

Charlie that poor woman. That is barbaric.

Those American anti-abortionists seem to be the same people pouring money into the No campaign in Ireland.

I had a conversation with one of the protesters a couple of years ago. I don't think she, and some others that go, consider their action outside the clinic as being anti-abortion protests. Apparently they lobby and take other action with regard to this.

She said the group were there in order to try and get women to change their minds about having an abortion. She said that in all of the years of doing it they 'saved one life' then it would be worth it.

She was of the view that the ends justify the means. Her goal was to 'get through to the women'.

Whilst conducted in a civil manner it was a very disturbing interaction.

I discovered that a Catholic friend of mine did the same in the 1980s -complete with abortion photos.

Charlie the same happened to a US friend of mine - she had to run the gauntlet in and out of the clinic for a "removal of retained products of conception" after losing a much-wanted pregnancy.

These people (the demonstrators) are just evil fuckers.

I heard a radio interview with a protestor who said their primary aim was to help the women who didn't really want an abortion but who had been pressured into it. She didn't explain why that required holding up gruesome posters, strangely.