PRESS RELEASE:ABORTION RIGHTS SCOTLAND

www.abortionrightsscotland.com

ABORTION IS HEALTHCARE

Saturday 27th April 2024 is the fifty-sixth anniversary of the day the 1967 Abortion Act became law in England, Wales, and Scotland. On that day in Edinburgh (11am to 1pm, Lothian Road) Abortion Rights Scotland celebrate abortion as healthcare and as a lawful choice – while on the other side of the road, SPUC (the Society for the Proection of the Unborn Child) are holding their protest against access safe, legal, local abortion, provided and delivered by the NHS.

For over a decade, feminists have gathered on the Usher Hall side of Lothian road, with colourful, homemade cardboard signs, facing the opposition with their uniform stance and negative message. This year, with decriminalisation of abortion to be voted on at Westminster, and decriminalisation in Scotland (abortion is devolved) mooted to MSPs at Holyrood, the simultaneous protests have a new urgency.

”Abortion care is provided by doctors, nurses and midwives,” Audrey Brown, retired NHS abortion specialist, points out. “Our professional bodies such as RCN and RCOG support decriminalisation of abortion. The recent spate of women being prosecuted for undergoing abortion creates fear and alarm, and will stop people seeking medical care when needed.”

On Tuesday 30th April, the Scottish Parliament will debate stage one of the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill, which is intended to make unlawful pro-life harassment outside clinics and hospitals SPUC’s frequent assertion is that they want to make this essential reproductive healthcare “unthinkable” – and the majority of people in Scotland oppose that outcome

“Everyone in Scotland has the right of peaceful public protest,” said Jane Carnall, Abortion Rights Scotland member who has been part of the pro-choice vigil on Lothian Road since the first year in 2012. “We have the right to be here to support abortion as a human right and essential healthcare. SPUC has a right to say they think abortion shouldn’t be available in Scotland, even if most people disagree with them. But the pickets stationed outside hospitals and clinics aren’t ‘protest’ – they’re harassing patients and staff, and that’s not peaceful and it’s not right.”

In 2021, there was an incident outside Chalmers Clinic in Edinburgh, where a man who supported the anti-abortion picket called the pro-choice counter-vigil “scumbags” and allegedly drove his car directly at one woman, striking her legs.

The two vigils on Lothian Road have faced each other without violent incident for over ten years.

ENDS

PHOTOS AVAILABLE OF 2012 and 2022 celebration available at https://www.abortionrightsscotland.com/ or on request.

BACKGROUND:

2015 Survation poll on abortion: https://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Final-ARE-Tables-1c0d8h4.pdf

Telemedicine early medical abortion at home: evaluation

https://www.gov.scot/publications/evaluation-telemedicine-early-medical-abortion-home-scotland/pages/1

Edinburgh Evening News report, October 2021

“Woman’s shock at ‘brazen assault’ after pro-lifer hits campaigner with car outside city’s Chalmers clinic”

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/people/pro-life-campaigner-drives-at-woman-outside-clinic-3428565

Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill

https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/abortion-services-safe-access-zones-scotland-bill/introduced