>When does quiet(ish) prayer become intolerable protest? When it takes place outside abortion clinics, thus upsetting patients and medical staff, according to Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister. The presence of hard-praying anti-abortionists from 40 Days for Life, a group based in Texas, outside Scottish hospitals and clinics has prompted Ms Sturgeon to back legislation that would allow no-go “buffer zones” around abortion providers.
>Introduced into England in 2010 and Scotland in 2017, 40 Days for Life holds 40-day “vigils” twice a year in more than a dozen places across Britain. The latest began on September 28th. Though the group says it discourages volunteers (most of whom are locals) from using graphic images of aborted fetuses and yelling, it has attracted some protesters who do. Shawn Carney, its co-founder and chief executive, says that doesn’t worry him. “Our main concern is the bigotry of the government,” he says. “Sturgeon…doesn’t like us, so she wants to get rid of us.” If the buffer law is passed, he says: “We will sue.”
>Mr Carney’s group is one of several American pro-life organisations that are stepping up their activities in Britain. CBR UK, an affiliate of the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, a Californian anti-abortion outfit that disseminates particularly gruesome images, says its British network of “volunteer educators”, who set up street displays, has grown from 50 a decade ago to 500. Dave Brennan, head of the group’s church ministry, says it wants to double that within a year. The group is currently focusing on universities.
>Stanton Health Care, from Idaho, which operates “clinics” that try to dissuade women from terminating pregnancies, opened in Belfast in 2015 and will do so in Edinburgh this year. British pro-lifers hope that they can learn from the long and successful campaign to overturn Roe v Wade, the American Supreme Court ruling of 1973 that enshrined the right to an abortion. American pro-lifers have also played prominent roles in campaigns to keep children on life support alive against the wishes of their doctors and the courts.
>Such activists are often supported in their efforts by ADF UK, the British chapter of Alliance Defending Freedom, an American conservative legal-advocacy group, which opened in 2015. With Christian Concern, a British association of similarly crusading lawyers, it set up the Wilberforce Academy, which trains young people for “Christ-centred leadership”.
>Freedom of speech and of religious expression—issues that have been more prominent in America than Britain—are at the heart of ADF UK’s battles. Its lawyers represented a midwifery student at Nottingham University who faced an investigation over her public opposition to abortion. In 2020 the university apologised and settled. The following year ADF UK helped a Catholic priest from Glasgow successfully challenge the government’s attempt to close churches during lockdown.
>Future campaigns seem likely to focus on the push to introduce abortion buffer zones. In America ADF sued to strike down a law allowing such zones in Massachusetts and won. Though the British Pregnancy Advisory Service says protests outside clinics are becoming more common, a policy on buffer zones across England and Wales seems unlikely soon. (In 2018 Sajid Javid, then the home secretary, said there was little need for one.) Yet several councils have established their own zones or are considering doing so. The Supreme Court has been asked to consider whether a prospective law allowing buffer zones in Northern Ireland would disproportionately affect the right to protest.
>Claims that buffer zones criminalise free speech have begun to influence anti-abortionists’ arguments more widely, according to Lucy Grieve, co-founder of Back Off Scotland. She set up the group in 2020 to oppose protests in Edinburgh, where she is a student. She has noticed a shift, she says, away from moral objections to abortion to talk about free speech. That is good news for Mr Carney of 40 Days for Life. Even pro-choice Britons agree with him about its importance, he says. “Freedom of speech is being butchered in Scotland. They can ban us…but they can’t do that and call themselves a free democracy.”
They need to go away, there are multiple justifications for abortion.
If they feel the need to contest them they should vote against it, oh wait they aren’t from the country they are trying to dictate to.
Best piss off then.
Who the hell invited the transatlantic senile religious fruitcakes to the party? Hopefully they’ll fuck off back to the US when they realise they aren’t welcome.
American nut jobs looking to make bank by pushing their rhetoric in the UK.
Fortunately, in this case!, we don’t have freedom of speech in the same way as it is in America.
Anyways How does it impose a limit on freedom of speech if they are forced to hold their campaigns in a lay-by on the A96 just outside Aberdeen! They can say what they like to the heather
Punt these religious fruitcakes Intae the fucking sea
Targeting Edinburgh and Universities… sounds like a quick way to get banned like the Mormons did.
USA was founded by religious nut jobs too religiously nutty even for the puritan nut jobs running Britain at the time. Looks like Americans are after payback.
Very dangerous. Religious fascism is a massive threat to us all.
These are useful idiots who are being used by the right wing to create a wedge issue that can be used to make people vote against their best interests.
> Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. . .In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful.
> [Jerry] Falwell, urged by Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, came to see something unique in abortion, a secret weapon that could allow this issue to serve as a means to an entirely different end. Opposing abortion rights was the Trojan Horse he and other white, Southern evangelicals had been looking for to repel integration and reify white supremacist patriarchal power. What spawned the modern anti-abortion movement wasn’t even abortion –– it was racism.
> Recently, we had a patient who had given a history of being a ‘pro-life’ activist, but who had decided to have an abortion. She was pleasant to me and our initial discussion was mutually respectful. Later, she told someone on my staff that she thought abortion is murder, that she is a murderer, and that she is murdering her baby. So before doing her procedure, I asked her if she thought abortion is murder — the answer was yes. I asked her if she thought I am a murderer, and if she thought I would be murdering her baby, and she said yes
Is it considered racist to tell them to fuck off back across the pond?
If they don’t like it, they can just stay at fucking home.
Nothing to do with morals, these people take hypocrisy to another level.
Well they can fcuk off back to America. Bloody nutters. Bringing your Handmaids Tale shit here!
Not surprising, they already have a full time lawyer based in Europe whose job is to fund and publicise the sad stories of very sick children who are being kept alive despite there being no hope of survival.
They are funded by billionaires and religious nut jobs in the US who not only want to persue their puritanical dogma but see it as a way of undermining what they regard as the godless “*Socialized (sic) Medicine*”.
I love how they call themselves pro life because it’s the complete opposite. They couldn’t give a fuck about the kids once they’re born.
In the UK, we have bodily autonomy. We won’t give that up for anyone. They’re wasting their time, embarrassing themselves.
And they all need to fuck right back off to America
I wish the media would stop calling these people ‘pro-life’…we have plenty of evidence here in the states that they are anything but that. They are anti-abortion, end of story.
Oh look, the USA sticking their nose into another country’s business. That’s so unlike them! /s
In all seriousness, fuck off with your religious fruitcake bullshit. That can stay in the US.
Support for abortion is **87%** in the UK (and holding steady)
Support for *banning abortion* is **5%** (and holding steady)
I’m a man, I don’t have ovaries. If you don’t have ovaries and they aren’t your ovaries, you don’t get to tell others what to do with their bodies..
This needs to stop as soon as possible. These people are a cancer. They need to be banned from entering the country and as soon as they show themselves to be terrorists they need to be deported.
Inb4 people once again start saying that “British abortion laws can’t be changed” like they were in America or Poland.
Newsflash: they can, and they will unless we actively stop the dark American/Brazilian and Russian money from fringe, fanatic groups that fund those idiots.
Is this tourism? Nope.
Is it business? Nope.
In that case either they have visas which should be revoked, or they don’t and are here illegally.
US citizens are not allowed to travel to the UK for the purpose of civil protest.
26 comments
>When does quiet(ish) prayer become intolerable protest? When it takes place outside abortion clinics, thus upsetting patients and medical staff, according to Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister. The presence of hard-praying anti-abortionists from 40 Days for Life, a group based in Texas, outside Scottish hospitals and clinics has prompted Ms Sturgeon to back legislation that would allow no-go “buffer zones” around abortion providers.
>Introduced into England in 2010 and Scotland in 2017, 40 Days for Life holds 40-day “vigils” twice a year in more than a dozen places across Britain. The latest began on September 28th. Though the group says it discourages volunteers (most of whom are locals) from using graphic images of aborted fetuses and yelling, it has attracted some protesters who do. Shawn Carney, its co-founder and chief executive, says that doesn’t worry him. “Our main concern is the bigotry of the government,” he says. “Sturgeon…doesn’t like us, so she wants to get rid of us.” If the buffer law is passed, he says: “We will sue.”
>Mr Carney’s group is one of several American pro-life organisations that are stepping up their activities in Britain. CBR UK, an affiliate of the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, a Californian anti-abortion outfit that disseminates particularly gruesome images, says its British network of “volunteer educators”, who set up street displays, has grown from 50 a decade ago to 500. Dave Brennan, head of the group’s church ministry, says it wants to double that within a year. The group is currently focusing on universities.
>Stanton Health Care, from Idaho, which operates “clinics” that try to dissuade women from terminating pregnancies, opened in Belfast in 2015 and will do so in Edinburgh this year. British pro-lifers hope that they can learn from the long and successful campaign to overturn Roe v Wade, the American Supreme Court ruling of 1973 that enshrined the right to an abortion. American pro-lifers have also played prominent roles in campaigns to keep children on life support alive against the wishes of their doctors and the courts.
>Such activists are often supported in their efforts by ADF UK, the British chapter of Alliance Defending Freedom, an American conservative legal-advocacy group, which opened in 2015. With Christian Concern, a British association of similarly crusading lawyers, it set up the Wilberforce Academy, which trains young people for “Christ-centred leadership”.
>Freedom of speech and of religious expression—issues that have been more prominent in America than Britain—are at the heart of ADF UK’s battles. Its lawyers represented a midwifery student at Nottingham University who faced an investigation over her public opposition to abortion. In 2020 the university apologised and settled. The following year ADF UK helped a Catholic priest from Glasgow successfully challenge the government’s attempt to close churches during lockdown.
>Future campaigns seem likely to focus on the push to introduce abortion buffer zones. In America ADF sued to strike down a law allowing such zones in Massachusetts and won. Though the British Pregnancy Advisory Service says protests outside clinics are becoming more common, a policy on buffer zones across England and Wales seems unlikely soon. (In 2018 Sajid Javid, then the home secretary, said there was little need for one.) Yet several councils have established their own zones or are considering doing so. The Supreme Court has been asked to consider whether a prospective law allowing buffer zones in Northern Ireland would disproportionately affect the right to protest.
>Claims that buffer zones criminalise free speech have begun to influence anti-abortionists’ arguments more widely, according to Lucy Grieve, co-founder of Back Off Scotland. She set up the group in 2020 to oppose protests in Edinburgh, where she is a student. She has noticed a shift, she says, away from moral objections to abortion to talk about free speech. That is good news for Mr Carney of 40 Days for Life. Even pro-choice Britons agree with him about its importance, he says. “Freedom of speech is being butchered in Scotland. They can ban us…but they can’t do that and call themselves a free democracy.”
They need to go away, there are multiple justifications for abortion.
If they feel the need to contest them they should vote against it, oh wait they aren’t from the country they are trying to dictate to.
Best piss off then.
Who the hell invited the transatlantic senile religious fruitcakes to the party? Hopefully they’ll fuck off back to the US when they realise they aren’t welcome.
American nut jobs looking to make bank by pushing their rhetoric in the UK.
Fortunately, in this case!, we don’t have freedom of speech in the same way as it is in America.
Anyways How does it impose a limit on freedom of speech if they are forced to hold their campaigns in a lay-by on the A96 just outside Aberdeen! They can say what they like to the heather
Punt these religious fruitcakes Intae the fucking sea
Targeting Edinburgh and Universities… sounds like a quick way to get banned like the Mormons did.
USA was founded by religious nut jobs too religiously nutty even for the puritan nut jobs running Britain at the time. Looks like Americans are after payback.
Very dangerous. Religious fascism is a massive threat to us all.
These are useful idiots who are being used by the right wing to create a wedge issue that can be used to make people vote against their best interests.
Abortion was [not historically a concern](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/) for evangelicals
> Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. . .In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful.
It only became an issue after segregated (white only) religious schools in the American south had their [tax exempt status removed](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/anti-abortion-politics-have-always-been-the-right-wing-s-trojan-horse-for-racism/ar-AAYFhbi)
> [Jerry] Falwell, urged by Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, came to see something unique in abortion, a secret weapon that could allow this issue to serve as a means to an entirely different end. Opposing abortion rights was the Trojan Horse he and other white, Southern evangelicals had been looking for to repel integration and reify white supremacist patriarchal power. What spawned the modern anti-abortion movement wasn’t even abortion –– it was racism.
And, of course, ‘[the only moral abortion is my abortion](https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/)”
> Recently, we had a patient who had given a history of being a ‘pro-life’ activist, but who had decided to have an abortion. She was pleasant to me and our initial discussion was mutually respectful. Later, she told someone on my staff that she thought abortion is murder, that she is a murderer, and that she is murdering her baby. So before doing her procedure, I asked her if she thought abortion is murder — the answer was yes. I asked her if she thought I am a murderer, and if she thought I would be murdering her baby, and she said yes
Is it considered racist to tell them to fuck off back across the pond?
If they don’t like it, they can just stay at fucking home.
Nothing to do with morals, these people take hypocrisy to another level.
Well they can fcuk off back to America. Bloody nutters. Bringing your Handmaids Tale shit here!
Not surprising, they already have a full time lawyer based in Europe whose job is to fund and publicise the sad stories of very sick children who are being kept alive despite there being no hope of survival.
They are funded by billionaires and religious nut jobs in the US who not only want to persue their puritanical dogma but see it as a way of undermining what they regard as the godless “*Socialized (sic) Medicine*”.
I love how they call themselves pro life because it’s the complete opposite. They couldn’t give a fuck about the kids once they’re born.
In the UK, we have bodily autonomy. We won’t give that up for anyone. They’re wasting their time, embarrassing themselves.
According to the most recent [YouGov poll](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/availability-of-abortion), 91% of people who expressed an opinion thought we should either keep the current system, or make access easier.
And they all need to fuck right back off to America
I wish the media would stop calling these people ‘pro-life’…we have plenty of evidence here in the states that they are anything but that. They are anti-abortion, end of story.
Oh look, the USA sticking their nose into another country’s business. That’s so unlike them! /s
In all seriousness, fuck off with your religious fruitcake bullshit. That can stay in the US.
Support for abortion is **87%** in the UK (and holding steady)
Support for *banning abortion* is **5%** (and holding steady)
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/should-women-have-the-right-to-an-abortion
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I’m a man, I don’t have ovaries. If you don’t have ovaries and they aren’t your ovaries, you don’t get to tell others what to do with their bodies..
This needs to stop as soon as possible. These people are a cancer. They need to be banned from entering the country and as soon as they show themselves to be terrorists they need to be deported.
Inb4 people once again start saying that “British abortion laws can’t be changed” like they were in America or Poland.
Newsflash: they can, and they will unless we actively stop the dark American/Brazilian and Russian money from fringe, fanatic groups that fund those idiots.
Is this tourism? Nope.
Is it business? Nope.
In that case either they have visas which should be revoked, or they don’t and are here illegally.
US citizens are not allowed to travel to the UK for the purpose of civil protest.