A 74-year-old woman was arrested after peacefully standing outside an abortion clinic in Scotland.
She was charged in connection with violating the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act, which prevents protests from occurring within 656 feet of a clinic, the BBC reports.
“The protests that have taken place outside Queen Elizabeth have been utterly shameful and I am grateful to Police Scotland for acting so quickly,” Scottish Greens MSP Gillian Mackay said. “This kind of intimidation has no place in a modern or progressive Scotland. Everybody deserves to have access to healthcare without harassment.”
Mackay is behind the law.
According to images circulating on social media, the arrested woman is Rose Docherty. She held a sign reading, “Coercion is a crime. Here to talk, only if you want.”
Police told Docherty that she was violating the law due to holding a “silent vigil.”
Vice President JD Vance condemned the Scottish law during his speech at the Munich Security Conference.
Discussing the case of a man convicted for violating the buffer zone policy, Vance said, “I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person.”
“But no. This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law,” he said, noting that with the law, the government is urging its citizens to report those “guilty of thought crime.”
“Free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” Vance said.
According to a September 2024 letter sent by the Scottish government, “activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area between the protected premises and the boundary of a Zone could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the Zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.” The letter included a link for citizens to “report a group or an individual that you think is breaking the law.”
