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Pro-life MPs are being urged to talk out in opposition to laws that may impose buffer zones round abortion clinics nationwide.
The buffer zones are proposed in an modification to the Public Order Bill, which returns to the House of Commons this week.
The modification was launched by Stella Creasy MP and handed by MPs final October.
The wording was then amended by Baroness Sugg in January however solely to convey the provisions into compliance with human rights legal guidelines.
The amended model makes it an offence to have interaction in any act which has the impact of “influencing any particular person’s resolution to entry, present or facilitate the supply of abortion companies”, and carries the specter of an infinite high quality.
It was backed overwhelmingly by MPs regardless of considerations round free speech, the chance to susceptible girls, and the specter of criminalisation for praying or providing help.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) is urging folks to put in writing to their MP asking them to talk out in opposition to buffer zones when the Bill returns to the Commons on 7 March.
SPUC’s Public Policy Manager, Alithea Williams, referred to as the modification an “outrageous assault on civil liberties”.
“Ordinary, peaceable residents will now be branded criminals and topic to crippling monetary penalties for the straightforward act of praying in public, and providing assist to girls in want,” she mentioned.
“Buffer zones additionally take away an actual lifeline for girls. Many youngsters are alive in the present day as a result of their mom acquired assist and help from a compassionate pro-life particular person outdoors a clinic.
“Many girls really feel like they must option to have an abortion, and pro-life vigils give them choices. Now their selections have been taken away.”
She added, “We can not let this intolerant and merciless measure move with out protest.”
Pro-lifers are already feeling the results of buffer zones in place round clinics in some cities. Last month, a Catholic priest, Fr Sean Gough, and pro-life volunteer, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, have been cleared in court docket after being charged by police with “intimidating service-users” for praying silently inside an abortion clinic buffer zone in Birmingham.
