Emma Rachel Deane, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent
Over the last 5 years the UK has seen a surge in anti-abortion campaigning targeted at women. Although abortion is not fully decriminalised in the UK, it is estimated that around 200,000 pregnancies are terminated in Britain each year. Two groups in particular, 40 days for Life and Abort67, have increased anti-abortion protest activity outside clinics. Many of the activists wear cameras strapped to their chests and carry banners and placards showing dismembered fetuses in an attempt to shame women for the decisions they are making for their own bodies. In addition to this, women have reported being followed and questioned by protesters while the daily harassment of staff members has made their working lives so uncomfortable that some have withdrawn their services.
I spoke to Abigail Fitzgibbon, the Head of Advocacy and Campaigns at British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), Britain’s leading provider of abortion services in the UK about this.
She said, “We have tried to work with the police wherever we have clinics to use existing legislation such as public order and harassment laws, but nothing has worked. The Home Office keeps saying that there is legislation in place and it should be used but we know it doesn’t work for this particular problem. Sometimes the police don’t even come to the clinics and if they do there’s very little action they can take to help.”
It is certainly true that the majority of seasoned anti-abortion activists who protest women’s choice are well aware of current public order legislation and are able to navigate around it to remain on the right side of the law. Unfortunately, the law allows protesters to remain standing just outside abortion clinics displaying graphic images and espousing unsolicited advice to women on what could be the most vulnerable day of their lives. It is time to recognise that the legislation we have in place to prevent harassment can no longer deal with this specific problem effectively.
Fitzgibbon went on to say, “It was with a heavy heart that we launched the Back Off Campaign. We didn’t ever think harassment outside clinics would get bad enough in the UK to warrant it. ”
Created by BPAS and supported by various high profile organisations such as Mumsnet and The Royal College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, the Back Off Campaign proposes the introduction of “buffer zones” around clinics in which protest activity cannot occur under the law. The introduction of such zones would put UK legislation in line with countries such as France, Canada and America and would allow women to get through the doors of a clinic without being approached by anti-choice activists or presented with shame-mongering images. The zones would also allow activists their right to protest at a respectful distance from the clinic while enabling women to access a lawful medical procedure in confidence.
The introduction of such safe spaces outside abortion clinics in the UK is a total necessity if organisations like BPAS are to contend with the tactics of anti-choice activists. Fitzgibbon told me, “The threat the activists pose isn’t just that they harass women and staff outside clinics, but that they are actually trying to close clinics down or prevent them from opening in the first place. We came very close to that happening to a BPAS clinic in Blackfriars. Unfortunately another clinic, not a BPAS one, did eventually have to shut down due to the unmanageable protests. There’s a handful of anti-abortion protesters who will go to these lengths, but you only need a handful to create absolute havoc.”
Under current legislation a BPAS patient could complain that she felt harassed and intimidated in public but if she is to see any kind of justice after reporting her ordeal she would then have to testify in court against her harasser or harassers. As Fitzgibbon says, “It seems a massive price to ask someone to pay. It pushes the problem back onto women again and almost punishes them for wanting to stand up for themselves.”
In 2014 Dawn Purvis, director of an abortion provider in Northern Ireland, secured a harassment conviction against Bernadette Smyth, leader of ‘Precious Life’, an organisation notorious for it’s anti-choice ‘street activism’. The conviction took almost a year to come about, during which time Dawn was subjected to questions in court surrounding her honesty and “fortitude”. Smyth has since won her appeal and the conviction was thrown out of court last month.
It’s no secret that a great deal of the UK’s pro-life movement stems from certain wings of particular churches. Abort67, for example, is linked to the Jubilee Community Church in Worthing, which BPAS has attempted to work with on repeated occasions in order to create a solution to the problem of inappropriate protesting by its members. Fitzgibbon has found the organisation to be less than helpful. “”When we appealed to them to help they told us that they supported the protesters. Its one thing to be anti-abortion and lobby parliament or appeal to congregations to write to MPs, it’s quite another to condone the harassment of women who believe different things. Whatever your feelings are on abortion, we should all be able to agree that the intimidation of women is not acceptable.”
It is certainly arguable that the line between the right to protest and a woman’s right to access medical care can be drawn in exactly that way. As Fitzgibbon put it, “The Back Off Campaign isn’t about trying to make a political point, its about what these protests are doing to individual women. The idea that this is about two sides of a debate is ridiculous. If someone wants to debate BPAS, or me, or somebody who is a campaigner then they’re more than welcome to, but taking that fight to individual patients is unacceptable.”
It can’t be ignored that this kind of protest activity around bodily autonomy is very specific to women and Fitzgibbon was clear in her view about this aspect of the argument. “For me, it’s just blatant misogyny and sexism which stems from two ideas. Firstly, that a woman is not bright enough to understand what’s happening when she has an abortion and secondly, something more sinister, which involves sexual ethics and the ability to control women.”
When anti-abortion street activists tell us that they are ‘just here to help’ it is certainly very interesting to imagine how they arrived at the conclusion that women needed their help in the first place. It is difficult to picture a world in which a man would face the same level of unsolicited advice for choosing to undergo a vasectomy. No one would accept the premise that he couldn’t possibly understand what the procedure involves and that he would need to be shown graphic images of testicles mid-operation to comprehend it.
When asked about her fears if the Back Off Campaign is unsuccessful Fitzgibbon replied, “We don’t want to frighten anyone, there’s no need to panic, but we all need to be mindful about what has happened in America in the past. The last thing we want to do is make women scared, but this is getting worse and nobody is paying attention to us.”
When men make up over 70% of British parliament it is hardly a challenge to work out why women’s interests are so often put on the back burner. I have no doubt that a parliament representative of the society it governs would go a long way in ensuring that the needs of its people were being met. Political representation and the decriminalisation of abortion are two of ‘fourth fave’ feminism’s biggest challenges. While these two problems combine to perpetuate a culture in which the harassment of women outside medical centres is accepted it is up to us to take action and support initiatives like the Back Off Campaign.
Find out more about BPAS here and write to your local MP here.
Emma Rachel Deane is a London-based retail manager for a fast growing women’s lifestyle brand and an outspoken advocate for women’s social justice issues. She can be found blogging on Raging Hag or tweeting @emmaracheldeane.
