A British city council approved a huge abortion clinic buffer zone Tuesday that will prevent pro-lifers from providing women with information about abortion and life-affirming alternatives. The measure would target pro-life people who pray at abortion clinics.
The BBC reports the Ealing Council in west London unanimously approved the 100-meter (328 foot) buffer zone around a Marie Stopes abortion facility in the city. It is the first of its kind in England, and abortion activists hope to pressure more councils to take similar action.
Those who violate the buffer zone could face fines or jail time.
Abortion activists claim the buffer zone is necessary to protect women from harassment, but pro-life advocates with the Good Counsel Network said they have never harassed women and “hundreds” have accepted the information they provide.
Pro-life advocate Clare McCullough told a local radio station a ban of pro-life vigils would support the business interests of the abortion facility, which has “lost about 13% of their clientele in the last year, that [GCN] have figures for.”
Here’s more from the Mirror:
Pro-choice protesters in pink high-vis vests outside tonight’s meeting chanted “What do we want? Safe zone. When do we want it? Now” and “Get your rosaries off our ovaries”. …
A counter-group of anti-abortion campaigners, which included several children, quietly stood and sang hymns including Amazing Grace.
Some of their signs read: “Don’t criminalise help” and “No censorship zones”.
Alina Dulgheriu became accidentally pregnant when she was working as a live-in babysitter – “definitely not the time to have a baby”.
She said a woman handed her a leaflet offering help as she walked into the Marie Stopes clinic, so she “went with her and got all the help I need and thanks to them I have my child”.
The so-called harassment included questions such as “Are you sure you want to kill your baby?”, images of babies in the womb on display and rosary beads.
John Hansen-Brevetti, operations manager for the Ealing Marie Stopes, claimed, “… this isn’t just about providing information, however inaccurate that information might be, this is about making people feel shame and fear for the decision they’ve made.”
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Marie Stopes, which will benefit from the new free speech restriction, has a long record of dangerous health and safety violations, as well as allegations that it gives staff incentives to sell more abortions.
It has an egregious safety reputation, having botched nearly 400 abortions in a two-month period in 2017, according to the British Care Quality Commission. In 2016, inspectors found such horrible conditions that the British government temporarily shut down some of the abortion chain’s operations.
Several women died along with their unborn babies at Marie Stopes facilities in the past decade. In 2011, a woman died from a failed legal abortion at a facility in Australia. In 2013, an Irish woman also died with her unborn child after having an abortion at one of its facilities in London.
In addition, one of its Australia facilities is facing a lawsuit after a woman said she almost died there from an abortion. The woman claims that a Marie Stopes abortionist failed to recognize that she had an ectopic pregnancy before the abortion. A few days later, the woman had to have emergency surgery because her fallopian tube ruptured and threatened her life, according to court documents.
The Care Quality Commission found evidence that Marie Stopes also was pressuring women to have abortions by incentivizing staff with bonuses.
The abortion chain has been accused of unethical practices in Africa as well. In 2017, a community in Kenya said Marie Stopes workers implanted long-lasting contraceptive devices into girls as young as 14 without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It also has been accused of doing hundreds of dangerous, illegal abortions in Africa.
