A professional-lifer has been arrested for allegedly breaching an abortion clinic buffer zone in Glasgow, Scotland.
The 74-year-old woman was arrested on Wednesday “and charged in reference to breach of the exclusion zone”, Police Scotland said.
She was amongst a gaggle of pro-life campaigners who’ve continued to carry vigils outside an abortion facility in Glasgow despite Scotland’s crackdown on pro-life activity.
Her arrest comes days after US Vice-President JD Vance drew attention to draconian abortion clinic buffer zones which criminalize pro-life activity, including prayer and offers of assistance to women experiencing crisis pregnancies.
Highlighting restrictions in Edinburgh, Vance told a conference of European leaders in Munich, “This last October, just a number of months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to residents whose houses lay inside so-called protected access zones, warning them that even private prayer inside their very own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the federal government urged readers to report any fellow residents suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”
Scottish First Minister John Swinney said Vance’s comments were “just fallacious” and that “no such point was put to residents in any respect on private prayer”.
The letter to Edinburgh residents said that even “activities in a non-public place (similar to a house) inside the area between the protected premises and the boundary of a zone may very well be an offence in the event that they might be seen or heard inside the zone and are done intentionally or recklessly”.
Vance’s comments have been defended by apologist and evangelist David Robertson. Writing for this website, he said, “If you stood inside an exclusion zone and prayed privately, you can be arrested and charged – as was the person in England who Vance also mentioned, Adam Smith-Connor.
“And because the letter sent to households states, the identical rules apply in a non-public house inside the exclusion zone, as to other areas in that zone. Therefore, logically, if private prayer is forbidden within the exclusion zone, then it must even be forbidden in a non-public house. Of course, if the curtains were closed and nobody else was present then nobody would know, and you wouldn’t be arrested. But in the event you mentioned to someone, or wrote on social media that you simply were praying for individuals who were having abortions, then you can be reported for breaking the law. The police have helpfully informed us that such actions might be reported to them.
“Vance’s statements on Scotland were subsequently substantively correct, irrespective of the attempts of some politicians and journalists to misinform us.”
Pro-life group 40 Days for Life has announced that it plans to fulfill on daily basis outside the Glasgow abortion clinic between 5 March and 13 April, despite calls to not accomplish that from Gillian Mackay, the Scottish Green MSP who championed the abortion clinic buffer zone laws.
“I urge 40 Days For Life and anyone else who’s planning to protest in a protected access zone to re-examine, as they might be stopped and there might be consequences,” she said.
