Pro-choice campaigners and politicians have been calling on the Scottish Government to introduce buffer zones as a matter of priority to prevent patients being harassed or intimidated.
Both the Sandyford clinic and Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow have been targeted by anti-abortion protesters.
Scotland's Women chats to teacher and activist Gemma Clark, who since a early age had been using her voice to fight for what's right. And in most recent years, she has been using her voice on social media to fight back at the anti-abortion protesters for the right for women and patients to go into a health care facility and have the right not to be harassed or intimated.
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[00:00:04] What's happening in Scotland right now, especially Glasgow, and remember, this is 2024.
[00:00:11] Yeah, so there's the buffer zone bill that's going through Parliament just now, and that's going to be a new bit of legislation, hopefully to keep protesters 200 metres from a clinic or hospital that provides abortion services.
[00:00:23] The bill would also mean that they can't be using voice amplification systems to shout into the buffer zone like some men outside the Sandiford Clinic in Glasgow have.
[00:00:31] So we've seen some horrible things in Glasgow. We've seen some pretty extreme preachers outside of a sexual health clinic shouting through megaphones, filming patients holding up really nasty signs.
[00:00:43] The bill is to try and stop that, and to be honest, I think it's absolutely for the benefit of women and anybody accessing a hospital because nobody wants to meet protesters.
[00:00:51] I'm just a very loud supporter, a very loud vocal supporter. It does make me angry.
[00:00:56] I've had to pass them myself when I was visiting someone in my family who was in hospital dying.
[00:01:01] So even though a woman wasn't in for abortion or reproductive care or anything like that, it's still very intimidating to pass a group of protesters going into a hospital when you've got a lot going on.
[00:01:10] And I can't imagine how much worse it must be for a young girl or a vulnerable young woman to have to pass these people.
[00:01:16] It does make me angry because people think this is a very liberal country, but it's 2024 and this is still happening.
[00:01:22] Scotland's women, our lives, our stories.