By The Newsroom
4th Jan 2026
A woman currently appealing a conviction for conducting an illegal protest inside a hospital’s ‘safe access zone’ is due to appear in court on fresh charges.
Claire Brennan is due to appear in Coleraine Magistrates’ Court on Monday to be charged with three offences of “doing an act inside a safe access zone” on three specific dates in September, October and November last year.
11 December 2025
Police in Coleraine have charged a woman in her 50s under the Abortion Services (SAZ) Act with three counts of doing an act in a Safe Access Zone.
The charges relate to incidents at Causeway Hospital in Coleraine between Wednesday 3rd September and Wednesday, 19th November.
She is due to appear before Coleraine Magistrates’ Court on Monday, 5th January. As is procedure, all charges will be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service.
Democracy for Sale investigation finds US anti‑abortion lawyer funding Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, while Alliance Defending Freedom’s UK spending soars.
May 31, 2025
By Peter Geoghegan and Max Colbert
Nigel Farage has often described himself as ‘pro-choice’ - but this week the Reform leader declared that plans to decriminalise abortion up to 24 weeks are “utterly ludicrous”.
Farage’s comments were striking. Not least as the abortion proposals have been backed by a cross-party group of MPs. But the Reform leader is not the only figure on the political right who seems to have a growing interest in Britain’s abortion laws.
Continued: https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/us-antiabortion-cash-floods-uk-free-speech-union-adf
The US vice-president’s avid concern for Livia Tossici-Bolt’s conviction is plain sinister
Catherine Bennett
Sun 6 Apr 2025
You know the feeling: you’re feeling sociable, why wouldn’t you make a sign saying “Here to talk, if you want to”, and head for a spot outside the nearest abortion clinic? And why wouldn’t some of its arriving patients want to pause before their appointments and satisfy your entirely innocent interest in their reproductive intentions?
This, give or take, amounted to the case by the prominent anti-abortion campaigner, Livia Tossici-Bolt, who was on Friday found guilty of twice breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO). Her sign-holding outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic was, she had argued, not covered by a council-imposed safe zone, being “a mere invitation to speak”. And thus an invitation she could have happily extended to strangers just a little further from the clinic. But that did not suit Tossici-Bolt’s purpose. Nor does anything prevent her from staging anti-abortion rallies, distributing literature, or expressing her views on abortion anywhere except right in abortion patients’ faces outside clinics. These details, although similar regulations exist in parts of the US, routinely fail to surface in accounts by her prominent US supporters, with whose help Tossici-Bolt has been misrepresenting the illegal undermining of UK women’s reproductive rights as a noble quest for free speech.
Apr 5, 2025
BBC
A woman convicted of breaching an abortion clinic protection zone has said she will continue her "fight for free speech".
Livia Tossici-Bolt, 64, was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs of £20,000 for two charges of breaking a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO). The anti-abortion campaigner held a sign reading "Here to talk, if you want" outside a clinic in Bournemouth on two days in March 2023.
The Canadian Press
January 31, 2025
A new Manitoba law restricting protests near clinics and hospitals where abortions are performed is to take effect Saturday.
The NDP government introduced a bill last year that creates buffer zones of between 50 and 150 metres around such health facilities, as well as the homes of abortion providers.
Inside those zones, people are not allowed to block access, attempt to dissuade people from getting an abortion or harass or intimidate individuals.
1st February 2024
By James McCarthy & PA Media, BBC News
A preacher who protested outside an abortion clinic has been convicted of breaching a protection order.
Stephen Green, 72, held a sign bearing a religious verse in a part of Ealing, west London, covered by a public spaces protection order (PSPO) last February.
Outside the MSI Reproductive Choices Clinic, it was the first such zone to be introduced in the UK. Green's conviction was welcomed by campaigners who said people were fed-up of seeing behaviour like his.
Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-68174047
Dec 2, 2022
An anti-abortion group is taking legal action over a clinic buffer zone, claiming it censors free speech and criminalises reading from the Bible.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council is being taken to court for introducing the zone to protect staff and visitors from protests.
Christian Concern said the council's consultation held prior to its introduction was "questionable".
Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-63834799
MP seeks to ban demonstrations outside abortion clinics
Jun 24, 2020
A bill seeking to ban demonstrations outside abortion clinics has been proposed by Labour MP Rupa Huq.
Last year, pro-life protesters lost a legal challenge against the UK's first buffer zone implemented around a clinic in Dr Huq's constituency.
Ealing Council said a 100-metre exclusion zone at the Marie Stopes centre had been put in place after women complained of being intimidated.
The Last Abortion Clinic in West Virginia
Esther Wang
Nov 18, 2019
The Women’s Health Center in Charleston, West Virginia is an unassuming, single-story beige brick building in a shabby neighborhood, just steps from the train tracks and a crisis pregnancy center, a shuttered vape shop, and a row of small homes surrounded by chainlink fences. I visited the center, the last abortion clinic in the state, on a Wednesday in June, one of the two days each week that the clinic performs abortions. Christopher McComas, 52, stood by the entrance to the clinic’s parking lot, equipped with a cell phone that he trained at everyone who approached the clinic.
“Hey brother, can I talk to you for a second? Please, for a second? Do you think it’s going to be a boy or a girl? Does it have blue eyes, or maybe brown eyes?” McComas yelled at one couple, a tall photo of a blood-covered fetus propped up by his side. “God loves you, please don’t do this ma’am! I beg you not to do this! It could be a boy or a girl,” he continued to yell at the couple as they entered the clinic, shielded by a large umbrella held by a clinic escort. “It could have brown hair!”
Continued: https://jezebel.com/the-last-abortion-clinic-in-west-virginia-1838886688
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