Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, has failed to understand the purpose of pro-life vigils outside abortion facilities, SPUC says, after she openly condemned abortion “protesters” who seek to help vulnerable mothers and their babies.

At First Minister’s Questions this week, Nicola Sturgeon responded to a question from pro-abortion MSP Monica Lennon regarding the potential imposition of buffer zones barring pro-life activity and free speech around abortion facilities.

“Does she regret that swift action has not been taken and can she confirm when tele-medicine for early abortion will be made permanent as Scotland is now trailing behind England and Wales on this important healthcare matter?” asked Lennon.

In her response, First Minister Sturgeon framed abortion vigils as “protest”, and that a buffer zones committee is “looking at ways to prevent any patients feeling harassed or intimidated…

“I condemn, and I will do so in the strongest possible terms, any attempts to intimidate women as they choose to access abortion services.”

First Minister Sturgeon added that pro-life activity should take place outside parliament, not abortion facilities.

Her remarks appeared to support buffer zones while also conceding that such a policy was itself up against a buffer of “complex legal issues”.

Illiberal effort to outlaw pro-life activity and speech

Last year, a QC said council buffer zones were unlawful in Scotland, as reported by SPUC. However, a Scottish Government spokesperson said that it would continue “to explore every avenue that is available” to stop pro-life activity.

Then, earlier this year, the Scottish Government sought to recruit a civil servant who would be “leading work on legislation on buffer zones, managing the shadow Bill team to enable the Scottish Government to respond appropriately to the planned member’s bill on this subject”, also reported by SPUC.

Spain is the latest country to impose a buffer zone outside abortion facilities. In effect, the new law redefined, and accordingly outlawed, pro-life action and free speech as “bothersome, offensive, intimidating or threatening”.

“We must not ban love”

SPUC’s Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), said: “It seems that First Minister Sturgeon has taken a leaf out of the pro-abortion playbook by mischaracterising pro-life vigils as protests that harass women. In reality, they are acts of love that seek to offer vulnerable mothers a way out of abortion.

“In recent years, unrelenting propaganda from media sources, politicians and activists has sought to smear pro-lifers as harassers to further a pro-abortion agenda that ultimately leads to more abortion and more heartbroken mothers.

“In 2018, a Home Office review, commissioned to assess whether there was a need to introduce buffer zones, found that ‘aggressive activities’ were ‘not the norm’. Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary at the time, concluded that ‘introducing national buffer zones would not be a proportionate response’.

“If politicians really do care about the welfare of mothers, as well as of unborn babies, they would not be vilifying and seeking to criminalise acts that, as Andrew Boff, a Conservative Member of the London Assembly, has said, ‘are coming from a position of love, of love for human life… showing that there is an alternative [to abortion]…

“‘To ban people from showing an alternate way, when the worst possible outcome of their activity might be that a child lives that otherwise would not live, I think is outrageous, quite frankly’, says Mr Boff.

“We must not ban love.”