MPs have voted overwhelmingly to impose “buffer” zones to prohibit prayers or pro-life counselling near all abortion clinics.
They voted by 297 votes to 110 in support of an amendment to the Public Order Bill to introduce 150-metre exclusion zones around abortion clinics nationwide, with infringements punishable by six months in prison.
The measure would ban influencing, impeding or threatening, intimidating or harassing, advising or persuading, using graphic, physical, verbal or written means to inform attendees about abortion services.
The buffer zones will cover all property visible from any space to which the public has access, including front gardens, front rooms and church grounds.
Many women have been helped outside abortion clinics by volunteers offering practical support to show they had another solution to a crisis pregnancy than an abortion.
If the Public Order Bill passes all its stages in the Commons and Lords, as is likely to be the case, given it is a Government Bill, such offers of support will become illegal.
During the debate in the House of Commons, Carla Lockhart, the Democratic Unionist Party MP for Upper Bann, said the new restrictions of freedom of speech and assembly were unnecessary to protect women.
She said: “We already have laws on the statute book to prevent harassment and maintain public order, including laws in place to ensure women are not harassed or intimidated outside abortion clinics”.
Congleton Conservative MP Fiona Bruce said the amendment’s broad implications “contravenes the basic principle of certainty of the rule of law”.
She compared handing out leaflets in front of an abortion clinic to an MP handing out leaflets at election time.
Parliamentarians would be “aghast” if their leafleting were met with a fine and imprisonment, and should equally be “aghast” that the amendment targets “people with faith-based views”, she said.
Mrs Bruce added: “When did it become against the law in this country to pray?”
Sir Edward Leigh, Conservative MP for Gainsborough and a Catholic, said that before Parliament “rush to create new laws … it is only right that the Government expects the police and local authorities to use their current powers appropriately and where necessary”.
Sir Edward urged Parliament to turn to existing laws to address any incidences of harassment outside abortion clinics.
Afterwards, Catherine Robinson of Right to Life said: “Hundreds of women have been helped outside abortion clinics by pro-life volunteers who have provided them with practical support, which made it clear to them that they had another option other than going through with the abortion.
“This passing of this amendment means that the vital practical support provided by volunteers outside abortion clinics will be removed for women and many more lives will likely be lost to abortion”.
Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, who proposed the amendment, said buffer zones protected “women accessing a very specific type of health care”.
She said: “It does not stop free speech on abortion. It does not stop people protesting. It simply says you shouldn’t have the right to do this in the face of somebody – and very often these people are right up in front of people.”
She added: “Let’s be honest, there’s nobody praying outside the places you get a hip operation.
“There is nobody offering rosary beads or dead foetuses outside places you might go for an ankle injury.
“There is a time and a place to have that conversation, but it is not when you are dealing with vulnerable women.”
Among Conservative MPs, former Prime Minister Theresa May and Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt voted in favour of the amendment while Home Secretary Suella Braverman and fellow cabinet ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Kemi Badenoch voted against it.
The Bill must pass through both Houses of Parliament before it becomes law.
The first buffer zone was imposed around Marie Stopes clinic in London by Ealing Council in 2018 but soon afterwards Sajid Javid, then Home Secretary, ruled out the extension of the zones to the whole country on the grounds that they were unnecessary and because there was no evidence of harassment.
Mr Javid concluded a national policy would not be proportionate in the light of the “passive” nature of activities outside of abortion clinics, as well as the existing powers of local councils and the police.
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