Urgent progress needed on buffer zones around abortion clinics

Back Off Scotland are a grassroots campaign group fighting for the right to harassment and intimidation-free access to abortion services in Scotland. BPAS is the largest abortion provider in England and Wales and has been leading the campaign to bring in buffer zones in all nations of the UK.
 
Across Scotland, roughly 75% of Scottish women live in a health board where hospitals or clinics have been targeted by anti-choice groups in the past five years. 

This means that hundreds of service users who need abortion care every year are forced to walk past groups directly opposing their right to access legal, essential healthcare as they enter clinics. There are people with microphones who call abortion seekers murderers, people who use their phones to film, people who follow and push leaflets into the hands of healthcare seekers with entirely falsely medical information that abortion causes breast cancer and increases the risk of suicide. 
 
It’s clear that we need to implement protest-free ‘buffer zones’ around clinics that provide abortion services in Scotland to stop the distress being caused by these anti-abortion groups on patients, members of clinical staff, and the general public.