KEEP ABORTION FREE SAFE LEGAL LOCAL

PRESS RELEASE

ABORTION RIGHTS EDINBURGH

Edinburgh Abortion Rights have assembles every year since 2012 on the 4th Saturday of April to celebrate the anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act becoming law. This year, we will be meeting on Saturday 23rd April, 11am to 1pm, on Lothian Road, by the Usher Hall.

Usually, on the other side of the road, the same kind of people assemble who have been protesting outside NHS hospitals for the past six weeks – the loud minority who think abortion should NOT be legal. This year, the Van Gogh exhibition on Festival Square means the anti-abortion protest will have to politely share the public space outside the Usher Hall with pro-choice feminists.

“We say that everyone who can get pregnant has the right to be able to decide to have an abortion if they need one,” said Jane Carnall of Abortion Rights Scotland.

Asked if having a pro-choice and an anti-abortion protest side by side was likely to cause difficulties, Jane Carnall said “The Edinburgh Abortion Rights Group stands with our supporters to affirm the basic human right of abortion, and the presence of these fanatics to protest that right shows we should never take for granted our right to access healthcare when we need it.”

More information:

CONTACT: Jane Carnall, hjcarnall@gmail.com, 07715 107 623

Photos of the Abortion Rights protest in past years available on request.

The Abortion Act has been settled law for 55 years and generations of women have been able to take for granted that if they need an abortion, they can have one – safely, legally, locally.

While the majority of people in Scotland accept that only the one who is pregnant can decide if she needs to abort her pregnancy, and she should be able to have an abortion on the NHS, a small minority think that Scotland should be more like certain states in the US where right-wing legislatures have lately been passing extreme abortion bans, sometimes causing all abortion access to be closed down in an entire state. During the six weeks before Easter, some of these people took part in a US-owned franchise called “40 Days for Life”, and gathered outside NHS hospitals to protest patient access to reproductive healthcare in Scotland. A private members’ bill has been proposed for Holyrood to put a stop to this harassment of patients.

Abortion was never criminalised in Scotland prior to 1967: while often difficult to access, abortion in Scotland was treated as a private matter between a woman and her doctor. The 1967 Act made abortion more accessible, but also made abortion criminal except under specific circumstances defined by the legislation.

Fifty-four years ago the Abortion Act became law in Scotland. Before the Act turns sixty we should decriminalise abortion completely – Scotland can and should become the first part of the UK where abortion is regulated like any other form of reproductive healthcare.