Abortion censorship zones come into force across Scotland

The Scottish Government has now implemented censorship zones legislation banning prayer and offers of help to pregnant women outside abortion centres.

From today, 30 places will come under the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act, including Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Under the Act, people risk an unlimited fine for handing out pro-life literature within 200m of a centre, speaking to anyone about abortion, or praying silently.

Criminalise

The law prohibits behaviour that seeks to influence “the decision of another person to access, provide or facilitate” an abortion.

It also criminalises any individual deemed to ‘prevent or impede’, or cause “harassment, alarm or distress” to someone in relation to their “decision to access, provide or facilitate” an abortion.

Writing in The Herald earlier this year, Lucy Grieve, co-founder of Back Off Scotland, boasted that Scotland “won a historic victory” after Holyrood passed the legislation into law.

Grieve said the activists’ “next priority” is campaigning to expand Scotland’s abortion services, and that they are “looking forward to working with the Scottish Government over the coming months to look at ways in which we can reform Scotland’s archaic abortion law”.

UK & Ireland

Last week, it was announced that censorship zones will also come into force across England and Wales on 31 October.

The zones will be created via an amendment to the Public Order Act 2023, which criminalises people who pray or offer advice to pregnant women within a 150m radius of an abortion centre.

Similar zones were introduced in Northern Ireland last year, while the Republic of Ireland’s Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services) (Safe Access Zones) Act 2024 came into law in May.

Yesterday, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) led a protest against the controversial legislation outside Holyrood, calling it “an affront to basic freedoms in Scotland”.