MSI responds to comments from US Vice President, JD Vance, attacking ‘Safe Access Zones’, which protect those providing and accessing abortion care from anti-choice harassment outside clinics in England, Scotland and Wales. MSI’s UK Head of External Affairs, Louise McCudden, said:
“It beggars belief that JD Vance has the nerve to lecture us about free speech.
“The legislation to introduce Safe Access Zones does not stop anyone from expressing their views – it simply prevents harassment and intimidation directly outside abortion clinics. Before the Zones were in place, our clients were called ‘murderers’, spat at, and photographed by strangers while seeking abortion care. Since the UK government enforced the Zones, this has stopped.
“Anti-choice campaigners continue to express their views and indeed they continue to do so in close proximity to several of our clinics, as permitted by the law.
“Far from being undemocratic, Safe Access Zones were fought for by grassroots campaigners in local communities who were fed up with seeing anti-choice harassment every day, and were introduced through a democratic, transparent process. The Zones are backed by 77% of the population.
“It is deeply ironic to see these comments from a US administration that seeks to gag what doctors can say to women around the world about their own healthcare, an administration that seeks to limit scientific research on ideological grounds, and an administration that just last week was ordered by their own courts to reverse the calamitous funding freeze imposed on some of the world’s poorest communities by the world’s richest man.
“If JD Vance is worried about free speech and democracy, he should start by looking a little closer to home.”
Notes to Editors
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