TCI commentary:
Back in January, Ealing Council held a controversial consultation on introducing a Public Spaces Protection Order, addressing behaviours outside the Marie Stopes Clinic. The decision, following a public consultation, was one of the first of its kind in the UK and attracted widespread opposition from anti-abortion campaign groups, who sought to challenge the decision in the High Court. Today however, High Court Judge Mr Justice Turner, dismissed the appeal stating there was “substantial evidence” of privacy invasion at a time of vulnerability and sensitivity.
This case will be particularly interesting for other councils looking to implement similar measures, as it has set a precedent around the rights of councils versus human rights.
Article:
A council’s decision to ban anti-abortion protesters from gathering outside a London clinic has been upheld in the high court.
Campaigners lost a legal challenge to a move by Ealing council to create a 100-metre, protest-free “buffer zone” around the Marie Stopes clinic. The council was the first in the country to take such a decision in an attempt to shield women from demonstrators.
Mr Justice Turner found the ban interfered with the activists’ human rights, but said the council was entitled to conclude it was a “necessary step in a democratic society”. “There was substantial evidence that a very considerable number of users of the clinic reasonably felt that their privacy was being very seriously invaded at a time and place when they were most vulnerable and sensitive to uninvited attention,” he said.
“It also follows that, in this regard, I am also satisfied that the defendant [council] was entitled to conclude that the effect of the activities of the protesters was likely to make such activities unreasonable, and justified the restrictions imposed.”
Lawyers for Alina Dulgheriu of the Be Here For Me campaign argued the local authority did not have the power to make the public spaces protection order, which came into force in April after reports of “intimidation, harassment and distress” of women using the facility in Mattock Lane.
Dulgheriu, 34, told how she was offered financial, practical and moral help, as well as accommodation, and now had a six-year-old daughter.
John Hansen-Brevetti, the clinical operations manager at the Ealing centre, said women had been told the ghost of their foetus would haunt them, heard chants of “Mummy, Mummy, don’t kill me” from protesters, and had holy water thrown at them and rosary beads thrust at them.
Kuljit Bhogal, the counsel for Ealing council, said it had to balance the group’s rights with those of the service’s users, clinic staff and others in the area upon whom the protesters’ activities were having a detrimental effect.
“In what has been a delicate balancing exercise, the council has facilitated the activities of the pro-life and pro-choice groups by providing a designated zone where they can continue their activities,” he said.
The Guardian has reported that eight councils in England were considering setting up abortion clinic buffer zones after pro-choice groups said the number of intimidating protests was on the rise.
Article originally appeared on The Guardian
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