Protection zones will be introduced around abortion clinics in England and Wales from the end of October, the British government said on Wednesday, in an effort to prevent the harassment of women using those services.
The new measures will prohibit protest within 150 meters — nearly 500 feet — of clinics or hospitals offering abortion services, and make it illegal to hand out anti-abortion leaflets in that buffer zone or block anyone from reaching a clinic. The penalty is an unlimited fine.
As legal access to abortion has been curtailed in several countries around the world, most notably after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion providers and academics in Britain say that protests at clinics in the country have increased.
In England and Wales, abortion is permitted up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, must be approved by two doctors, and can only be carried out under the care of a licensed clinic or National Health Service hospital. An abortion can be carried out after that time only if the mother’s life is at risk or if the fetus has a severe abnormality.
Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding, said in a statement that the buffer zones would combat “harassment, abuse and intimidation as people exercise their legal right to health care.”
“The right to access abortion services is a fundamental right for women in this country, and no one should feel unsafe when they seek to access this,” she said. “For too long abortion clinics have been without these vital protections, and this government is determined to do all we can do to make this country a safer place for women.”
The new measures formed part of a law passed under the previous Conservative government, the Public Order Act 2023, following a vote in Parliament that received broad cross-party support.
They will make it illegal for “anyone to do anything that intentionally or recklessly influences someone’s decision to use abortion services, obstructs them, or causes harassment or distress to someone using or working at these premises,” according to the Home Office, the government department responsible for crime and policing.
It promised guidance for the police and prosecutors on how to enforce the law in the coming weeks, before the measures come into force.
The protections will bring England and Wales in line with other parts of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland introduced a similar policy last year, and Scotland recently passed legislation creating buffer zones around abortion clinics that comes into force later this month.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, a charity that provides reproductive health care services including abortion across Britain, has been campaigning for a decade for safe zones around clinics.
Heidi Stewart, its chief executive, said in a statement that the new measures “can’t come soon enough.”
“For years our staff and the women we care for have endured anti-abortion fanatics standing outside clinics for hours on end, staring at them accessing or going to provide private medical care, stopping them outside and telling them that abortion is murder, handing out leaflets,” she said, adding, “We and Parliament have been clear that none of this behavior is acceptable outside a medical service.”
Catherine Robinson, a spokeswoman for Right To Life U.K., an anti-abortion charity, criticized the new protection zones, saying that the group’s volunteers had provided “practical support” to women outside abortion clinics.
“The implementation of buffer zones next month will mean that vital practical support provided by volunteers outside abortion clinics, which helps to provide a genuine choice, and offers help to women who may be undergoing coercion, will be removed for women and many more lives will likely be lost to abortion,” she said.
Louise McCudden, U.K. head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, a charity that provides contraception and abortion services, some of its clinics’ staff had witnessed a variety of harassment from anti-abortion activists.
“The behavior we’ve seen outside our clinics includes spitting, calling women ‘murderers,’ crying out ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ to women as they enter or leave, filming or taking photographs, and handing out false medical information,” Ms. McCudden said in a statement.
The charity provides reproductive services in a number of countries around the world and Ms. McCudden noted that anti-abortion protests outside their clinics had spiked after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending five decades of abortion rights in the United States.
“Whatever your personal views are on abortion, nobody should be harassed while accessing health care,” she said.
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