A pro-abortion “safe areas” bill, prohibiting pro-life speech, prayer and assembly in the vicinity of abortion clinics, is threatening free speech in New Zealand. Michael Robinson, SPUC Director of Communications and Campaigns, said: “The attempt to prevent pro-lifers expressing their views, offering help to women outside clinics, or simply praying for them and their babies, is part of a broader attempt to normalise abortion.” 

The Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill, introduced by the New Zealand MP Louisa Wallin late July, seeks to restrict pro-life activity “on a case-by-case basis” within 150 metres of abortion clinics.

Presented as an amendment to the 2020 Abortion Legislation Act, which legalised abortion up to the point of birth in New Zealand, as reported by SPUC, the bill follows “some of the most extreme abortion laws the world has ever seen”.

The new bill prohibits “certain behaviour” that section 13A defines as:

• “intimidating, interfering with, or obstructing a protected person either with the intention of frustrating the purpose for which the protected person is in the safe area, or in a manner that an ordinary reasonable person would know would cause emotional distress to a protected person.
• “communicating with, or visually recording, a person in a manner that an ordinary reasonable person would know would cause emotional distress to a protected person.”

Attack on free speech

Mr Robinson said: “In Britain, hundreds of babies have been born following the offer of help to women outside abortion clinics. The mothers of these babies are now protesting against the introduction of so-called ‘buffer zones’ around these clinics. Abortion campaigners routinely misrepresent caring, prayerful vigil members as being in some way ‘intimidating’ and causing ‘emotional stress’.

“The Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill, which claims ‘to protect the safety and well-being’ of women, as well as ‘respect’ their ‘privacy and dignity’, when ‘accessing abortion facilities’, takes no interest in the well-being and dignity of the unborn child, or the true well-being and dignity of the woman under pressure to abort that child.

“As Daniel Frampton has written, banning peaceful, prayerful vigils is part of ‘the disingenuous and illiberal’ attempt to silence legitimate petition where it is needed the most.

“SPUC hopes that the bill does not pass its first reading.”

Say no to buffer zones

SPUC has campaigned against “buffer zones” in the UK, defeating one such attempt in 2018, when, after a Home Office report, Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary at the time, concluded that such legislation would not be proportionate.

To find out more about SPUC’s campaign against buffer zones, please click here.