Written submission from British Pregnancy Advisory Service (SPP0080)

Background

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) is a reproductive healthcare charity that offers abortion care, contraception, STI testing, miscarriage management, and pregnancy counselling to nearly 80,000 women each year via our clinics in England, Wales, and Scotland.

As part of our advocacy work, we have been running the Back Off campaign to introduce buffer zones around abortion clinics and pregnancy advisory bureaux since 2014. This is based on the evidence we collect from our clients that indicate protests outside clinics are a distressing and intimidating form of gendered street harassment.

Street harassment and abortion clinics

• Not all street harassment is sexual in its content – but is still targeted primarily or exclusively at women and girls in public places. This was recognised in End Violence Against Women’s March 2016 YouGov poll which asked respondents whether they had ever experienced “unwanted attention (non-contact) (e.g. shouts, insults, staring, name-calling etc.)” in public spaces. 55% of women said that they had.
• Protests outside abortion clinics are an example of this type of unsolicited attention – protesters disproportionately focus on women, including staff and passers-by, approaching them, trying to speak to them, and offering them leaflets. Sometimes this escalates to shouting, being followed, or being filmed without consent. This is generally not experienced by men accompanying clients or by male staff members.
• In some places, women are subjected to gendered language that aims to instil guilt and shame in their decision to access abortion services, with protesters addressing women as ‘mum’ (Marie Stopes West London in Ealing, BPAS Richmond), holding a framed picture with a foetus with a speech bubble saying ‘Please Mum, don’t kill me.’ (Marie Stopes South London in Brixton), being handed letters addressed ‘To Mummy…’ (Marie Stopes Maidstone). A couple of clinics, including BPAS Bournemouth, have reported knitted booties in blue and pink being handed to women and left in hedges near the clinic.
• Leaflets handed out outside a number of clinics around the country begin “Abortion violates something basic in a woman’s nature. She is normally the giver of life. When she is deprived of her natural role as a mother she usually reacts with bitterness…”
• In some areas, protesters also approach female passers-by, often mothers with small children. One of these accounts from BPAS Streatham says “I have on several occasions been approached by [the protesters] wanting my support and telling me how they save these ‘babies’. They have often commented on my children in a buggy and how they help stop women making the mistake of killing their babies. Totally unnecessary, I’m just walking past.”

• One report from Marie Stopes Central London says: “I think they are pure and simple harassment. At the protest I witnessed, the protestors were mostly middle-aged men using Christian religious teaching to shout abuse at women. They didn't pick out any woman in particular, but just shouted at all woman.”
• The unchallenged presence of these individuals is also difficult for some local residents to understand, with many reports referring to ‘harassment’ of clients and passers-by. One account from a local resident near BPAS Richmond says “They were intimidating and they made me feel angry because they should not be allowed to intimidate people in a vulnerable situation. I was also annoyed because I had to find a way of explaining to my then 5-year old daughter. My son's nursery is round the corner and I always took a different route to avoid the protesters, which isn't right either. I should have the right to feel unthreatened walking on that street and so should everyone.”
• The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women recently published a report on abortion access in Northern Ireland which included discussion of protests outside abortion clinics. The Committee ruled that the UK had, in ‘failing to protect women [in Northern Ireland] from harassment by anti-abortion protesters when seeking sexual and reproductive health services and information’ breached Articles 10 (access to education) and 12 (access to healthcare) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Scale and impact of harassment

• 42 clinics in the United Kingdom have been targeted by protesters in the last 12 months. This varies from prayer gatherings every couple of months to a daily presence of people who approach women and try to speak to them. Our map of the affected sites, along with details of protest activity, can be found here.
• We have received over 850 individual reports from clients, escorts, local residents, passers-by, and healthcare workers at clinics and hospitals across the country. When asked how protests outside abortion clinics made them feel, this was their response:

• Individual responses vary in the severity of the impact of protests:
• BPAS Norwich, February 2018 “[They made me feel] angry and frustrated as it’s nothing to do with them.”
• BPAS Bournemouth, February 2018 “Although they were quiet and the wording on the placards didn’t bother me, I still felt alarmed and judged. I walked round to the 2nd entrance to avoid them.”
• Marie Stopes Manchester, February 2018 “I felt frightened and intimidated. They were older men and I was a relatively young woman on my own – due to previous experiences, just that simple fact was enough to make me nervous.”
• BPAS Richmond, January 2018 “[They made me feel] sad, upset, anxious to the point I was worried about walking into the clinic.”
• Marie Stopes West London (Ealing), December 2017 “[They made me feel] degraded, personally attacked, and intimidated.”
• BPAS Portsmouth, November 2017 “[They made me feel] so angry. Like they were trying to force shame on me and other women. Intimidated.”
• BPAS Doncaster, March 2017 “[The protester] harassed me up the street, wouldn’t stop following me. I didn’t want to return today. Suffered an anxiety attack on approaching the clinic.”
• Marie Stopes Central London, January 2017 “[They made me feel] guilty, depressed. I’m still suffering from PTSD.”

Why does harassment happen?

• These groups do not consider themselves protesters – they believe they are, varyingly, ‘educating’ women, ‘offering alternatives’, or ‘bearing witness’ to abortion.
• There is a belief among many groups that a woman’s ‘natural role’ is motherhood and abortion is seen as women transgressing this expectation
• Abortion is therefore seen as the result of women being misled and/or abused by their partners, their family, or the abortion provider. In this belief, they deny women any agency in their decision and consider it appropriate to approach them and ‘offer other options’. Other groups claim to ‘educate’ women about the ‘reality of abortion’ – patronisingly believing that women themselves are unaware of the medical procedure they are consenting to.

Preventing and responding to harassment

• This type of activity in the UK dates, as far as we know, from the 1980s onwards – this not a transient problem. No approach so far has worked to stop this harassment.
• These groups seek their victims in a very specific area – designed specifically so they can have direct access to them and use tactics designed to upset and prey on heightened emotions. They have made clear they will not voluntarily stop doing this.
• The only way to address this problem comprehensively is national legislation to introduce ‘buffer zones’ – areas outside clinics and pregnancy advice bureaux where certain activities such as approaching women and displays anti-abortion placards are banned.

March 2018