SPUC has condemned Manchester City Council’s anti-life decision to approve a buffer zone around a Marie Stopes clinic in Fallowfield.

Antonia Tully of SPUC said: “Manchester City Council’s decision means that women approaching the abortion clinic will not get the loving support and care of pro-lifers at the time when they need it most. This time last year the City Council ran a sham consultation on whether a buffer zone should be imposed. The outcome was a foregone conclusion and we knew then that women in Manchester would lose out on the real help pro-lifers outside the Fallowfield clinic can give.”

Sham consultation

John Marechal of the SPUC Manchester Region said that the consultation on whether to implement a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) around the clinic was “one-sided”.

Last October, local SPUC supporters wrote to the City Council stating that they would not engage with the prejudiced consultation on the grounds that it misrepresented what actually took place at pro-life vigils, contained a strong bias against pro-life vigils, and forced respondents to concede that harassment and intimidation were taking place, when nothing of the kind was actually happening.

But when the Council asked whether intimidatory behaviour outside clinics was a “problem”, there was no option to say that no such harassment had taken place.

Misrepresentation of pro-life vigils

Antonia Tully said: “What is so terrible about offering women last-minute help as they approach the abortion clinic? Every year, hundreds of women take advantage of this help.

“Manchester City Council was determined to believe the false premise that pro-life vigils are necessarily aggressive and threatening. In the consultation the Council asked whether intimidatory behaviour outside clinics was a ‘problem’, with no option for people to say that no such behaviour was taking place.

“The fact is that the people who take part in pro-life vigils have neither capacity for nor inclination to aggressive or coercive behaviour.”

Save The Right to Save Lives

Anti-life MP Rupa Huq recently introduced a nationwide measure to “restrict demonstrations in the vicinity of abortion clinics” in the House of Commons. Her Bill threatened to jail pro-lifers for six months for expressing any opinion on abortion within 150 metres of an abortion clinic.

Although the Bill was blocked, the threat is not gone.

Sign the petition calling on the Home Secretary or the Scottish Justice Secretary to uphold the right of peaceful, law-abiding pro-life citizens to save the lives of unborn children and to offer help to pregnant women directly outside abortion clinics and to reject any measure to restrict this activity here.