New measures are being considered to protect pregnant women from being harassed and intimidated by ‘aggressive’ pro-life campaigners.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd is launching a review of conditions surrounding abortion clinics after some women reported being called ‘murderers’ and met with signs with ‘distressing and graphic’ images as they entered the buildings.
The review could give police, healthcare providers and local councils the power to ‘protect women making these tough decisions’.
Rudd said: ‘While everyone has a right to peaceful protest, it is completely unacceptable that anyone should feel harassed or intimidated simply for exercising their legal right to healthcare advice and treatment.
‘The decision to have an abortion is already an incredibly personal one, without women being further pressured by aggressive protesters.’
The review will use evidence from across the country, as well as the USA, Australia and France.
New measures are being considered to protect pregnant women from being harassed and intimidated by ‘aggressive’ pro-life campaigners. Pro-life protesters are pictured outside an abortion clinic in Belfast
The Government said it could include ‘bolstering existing or creating new police and civil powers’.
It has been fulled by a letter sent to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by London MP Rupa Huq and 112 of her colleagues after she received reports of women being ‘intimidated’ and harassed’ in her Ealing constituency.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd (pictured outside Downing Street) is launching a review of conditions surrounding abortion clinics after some women reported being called ‘murderers’ and met with signs with ‘distressing and graphic’ images as they entered the buildings
She reported women being faced with ‘oversized signs with distressing and graphic images’, branded ‘murderers’, and filmed as they walked into clinics in the area.
The Ealing and Acton Central MP, who is the sister of TV presenter Konnie Huq, branded her local authority powers ‘insufficient’ at dealing with the issue.
Ealing Council then pledged to ‘prevent anti-abortion protesters from intimating and harassing women’.
Corbyn has also backed demands for ‘buffer zones’ outside clinics to safeguard pregnant women.
An organisation called The Good Counsel Network, who claims to ‘seek an to end abortion one baby, one Mother, one family at a time’, holds vigils outside the west London abortion clinic 38 hours a week.
But they have written to Rudd saying that the vigils do not involve calling any women ‘murderers’, reports The Sunday Times.
Director Clare McCullough told the newspaper many of the women they deal with are forced into aborting their babies, saying: ‘We can help women with the basic things they need, a roof over their head, food on their table, legal problems, accessing medical care, baby things…’
Another group, Abort67, told The Times: ‘Showing the truth is not harassment.’
On its website, the group describes its mission as: ‘To make abortion unthinkable and to see the law give full protection to the unborn.
‘The most effective way to change public policy is to first change public opinion.’
It has been fulled by a letter sent to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by London MP Rupa Huq (pictured) and 112 of her colleagues after she received reports of women being ‘intimidated’ and harassed’ in her Ealing constituency