Written submission from Dr Pam Lowe and Dr Sarah-Jane Page (SPP0060)
Summary
Background
1. Normally when encountering strangers in public spaces, people register the presence of each other (such as moving aside on a pavement) but do not generally engage with each other through physical, visual or verbal behaviour (such as waving, eye contact or speaking). This is known sociologically as civil inattention. Where civil inattention is not granted to others, which is often the case for women, it is often because they have lower status in society. Street harassment of women is a threatening form of civil inattention and perpetrators are often viewed as potentially dangerous. The breaking of the social rule of civil inattention explains why women feel harassed by comments by strangers in public even when the comments themselves are polite or complimentary. In order to counteract this potential danger, women may restrict their use of public spaces or utilise specific strategies (such as avoiding walking) to try to control the level of harassment that they are subjected to.
2. The policing of women’s bodies in public places from sexual violence to non-violent interactions which question women’s autonomy need to be understood as part of a continuum. The bodies and behaviour of women are often subjected to comment, control or unwanted contact, and much of this is linked to their ability to reproduce. Women literally give birth to future groups, communities and nations, thus controlling women leads to the control of future generations. Identifying and shaming women who are deemed to have transgressed from social norms is also an effective method of control.
3. We suggest it is important to understand anti-abortion activism outside abortion clinics as a form of gendered street harassment. It creates an intimidating, hostile, and humiliating environment and as women’s sexual activity leads them to needing an abortion, we would argue that some of the interactions are related to specific understandings of women’s sexuality. The purpose of anti-abortion activism around abortion clinics is for strangers to watch and approach women, as well as drawing public attention to the site of abortion service providers. The distress and anxiety that women experiences is linked to broader fears about, and experiences of, gendered harassment when using public space.
4. Our understanding of anti-abortion activism outside clinics arises from ethnographic research at 22 different sites across the UK where anti-abortion activists organise activities outside abortion service providers. Many of the sites were visited more than once and we included sites where anti-abortion activists are present daily to those with less frequent activities; we also included sites linked to all the main organisations who arrange activities outside clinics. At each site, we observed and recorded the activities, and, where the anti-abortion activists consented, conducted informal and formal interviews with people involved in the protests. In addition, the researchers undertook an analysis of comments submitted to bpas by individuals accessing their services, and made about the anti-abortion activities, from August 2011 and April 2015.
The scale and impact of public harassment of women and girls outside abortion clinics
5. Like other forms of public harassment, anti-abortion vigils outside abortion clinics are a source of significant distress to many women. There are two main activities that take place outside abortion clinics: ‘public witnessing’ of abortion and ‘pavement counselling’.
6. Public witnessing is an act that arises from a faith position. Its purpose is to draw attention to the ‘evil’ and/or ‘sinfulness’ of abortion though the presence of activists outside the clinic and the prayers and religious rituals that they perform there. As it has been described to us by one anti-abortion group:
‘Know where you are – Calvary is happening again at each abortion centre. When Jesus was being crucified Mary didn’t stay at home (…) but publically witnessed (…) We follow her example’ (Pavement counselling’ guide, Birmingham)
Through public witnessing, anti-abortion activists seek to publicly oppose abortion as well as asking for God to intercede to prevent abortions from taking place.
7. Women experience the groups that gather outside abortion clinics as intimidating both in themselves as well as being upset by the way their presence invites passers-by to observe that women are seeking an abortion. Whilst it is the case that anyone could see people entering and exiting a building, anti-abortion activists who stand outside clinics are expressly there to draw attention to the building as part of their mission to bear witness making it into a public spectacle. The lack of civil inattention creates an intimidating and humiliating environment for women and girls.
8. ‘Pavement Counselling’ is the way that anti-abortion activists describe their actions when they make a direct approach to women. They will usually try to speak to people entering the clinic. Some try to start the conversation in quite a neutral way, and they may not make their intentions known until further into the conversation. Others are more forceful, and can, for example, address women as ‘mum’ and/or tell them that the abortion clinic will lie to them about the risks of the procedure. They also often try to give people leaflets. The pavement counsellors will also occasionally follow women, usually for a short distance as they are entering or leaving an abortion clinic.
‘She was actually standing in front the clinic when I left and followed me all the way and talking about my personal issue in front of many people on the street’. (Client comment, Stratford, 2015).
Pavement counsellors are often seen as potentially dangerous strangers by women. Their approaches are experienced as unwanted and unwarranted encounters:
‘When I walked up to the clinic and saw people protesting the entrance I was scared that I would be harassed or injured by an over-zealous extremist’. (Richmond, 2014)
9. It is difficult to be exact about the scale of harassment outside abortion clinics. We estimate that around 40-50 abortion clinics have had anti-abortion activists outside in the in the last 12 months, but many are organised through informal local groups that pop up then dissipate. The sites where we have undertaken observations over the last three years are: Belfast, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Buckhurst Hill, Cardiff, Central London (Whitfield Street), Doncaster, Ealing, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hemel Hempstead, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Richmond, Stevenage, Stockport, Stratford (London), and Streatham.
10. There are significant variations over the scale of the activities, ranging from some clinics in London which have ant-abortion activists outside nearly every day, and others that might only have them for a few hours a week or at specific times in the year (such as the 40 Days for Life campaign during Lent). Likewise the numbers outside the clinic vary, most will have 2-4 anti-abortion activists, but the numbers can swell to 50-60 people on occasions.
11. Many women experience the presence of anti-abortion activists as a form of gendered street harassment. Women are all too often the subject of unwanted attention in public spaces and are often wary of strangers. In this context, encountering anti-abortion activists outside of clinics (whether male or female) is seen as threatening as they cannot predict what the anti-abortion activists will say or do to try to stop them entering the clinic. This uncertainty is a source of anxiety.
12. Women also experience anti-abortion activism as an invasion of healthcare privacy. Their actions are seen as drawing public attention to clinics and making a public spectacle of women’s decisions. Entering a clinic becomes a ‘paparazzi’ encounter, regardless of what type of action is taking place. The failure by anti-abortion activists to uphold civil inattention makes their access of a specific reproductive healthcare service public. Moreover, as abortion stigma is still a significant issue, the public attention acts as a shaming exercise.
13. The encounters outside clinics reassert gendered power relationships by subjecting women to unwelcome attention in a way that they have no control over. They have little choice but to walk through or past the anti-abortion activists who are watching or trying to talk to them. Whilst they may take steps to try to avoid or minimise the encounters (such as by covering their faces), there is still a situation of surveillance, loss of privacy, and fear. This is similar to other experiences of harassment in public places.
Why does gendered harassment of women and girls in public places happen?
14. Gendered harassment of women is an outcome of the broader inequalities in society, in which women tend to lack power and status. The sexualisation of women and girls arises through specific understandings about sexuality, which include the Madonna/whore dichotomy in which women are either natural mothers or sexually available to men. The bodies and behaviour of women is judged by and through assumptions about women’s ability to reproduce. Women literally give birth to the nation, and thus their ability to reproduce has long been subject to control by others though multiple mechanisms such as social norms, laws and religious doctrine.
15. Unwanted encounters in public spaces, both outside abortion clinics and elsewhere, are often ways of refocusing attention on the sexual and thus reproductive bodies of women. Whilst direct comments on women’s sexual activities (which led them needing an abortion) are infrequent, it is clear that a few of the anti-abortion activists hold very specific views about women having sex. Many hold very traditional religious views in which sex outside of marriage is seen as problematic, and outside a clinic one women suggested that that young women ‘should keep their legs together’. Many suggest that abortion should not be allowed even in cases of rape as abortion it doesn’t ‘unrape’ a woman.
16. The harassment outside abortion clinics takes place for a number of reasons. The specific faith beliefs of activists constructs women’s role as women as ‘natural’ mothers and pregnancy as a gift from God. To date the largely Christian-backed groups and organisations that stand outside clinics has been tolerated rather than challenged. This may be due to an unwillingness to be critical of a faith position, as well as a lack of acknowledgement of the impact on women. Trivialising or overlooking women’s experiences of non-violent harassment in public is not uncommon but it is important to recognise the way that this contributes to a hostile public environment for women and girls.
17. More broadly, women’s structural position as lacking in power and status within society means that they are more likely to be the target of harassment. Street harassment of women occurs because women lack public status and the act of street harassment reaffirms women’s lower position. The threat of harassment often leads to women taking steps to try to minimise the risk to themselves individually rather than society understanding harassment as a collective issue.
Preventing and responding to gendered harassment of women and girls in public places
18. It is clear from our research that women do feel harassed and intimidated by the presence of anti-abortion gatherings outside of abortion service providers. As the harassment of women and girls is linked to their power and status in society, initiatives to prevent and respond need to be enacted at different levels. Reducing gender inequalities across all sections of society must be the overall aim, but different steps can be taken within it. National legislation to create safe zones around abortion clinics would send a strong message that the harassment of women in public places is not tolerated. It would send a clear message that the bodies and behaviour of women should not be judged by others and the decisions that women make about their sexual and reproductive lives should be respected.