Dear Editor,
I was 12 when David Steel’s Abortion bill was signed into law. It was said then that about 6,000 legal abortions per year where expected as a result of the Act.
I am now 70. About 200,000 abortions per year take place in this country (mostly of viable foetuses).
I don’t think any of the MPs who voted for the 1967 law in would have anticipated the magnitude of this carnage 58 years later.
The Assisted Dying bill is poised to become law. If a similar multiplication takes place, it will open the door to the death of the elderly in future decades of a magnitude of horrifying proportions.
Yours sincerely,
Tom Marcus
By email
Dear Editor,
In his recent article, [‘J.D. Vance and the crisis of the West’] David Robertson claims that the Scottish government has lied about private prayer in homes within exclusion zones [around abortion clinics].
He then provides a link to a “fact check” article in another Christian paper. The author is ... David Robertson himself. However, even his own comment does not prove that the Scottish government are lying, in fact the opposite. He says: “A letter was sent to residents within an Edinburgh exclusion area warning them that while the offences in general only applied in public places, ‘however activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area between the protected premises and the boundary of a zone could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the zone and are done intentionally or recklessly’. The letter warned that regulation breakers could be fined up to £10,000. Religious preaching, prayer or silent vigils could be subject to prosecution if they are done with ‘intent or recklessness’.”
It seems clear from this that the warning is that if you use a private premises as a base for a public protest, that you cannot then claim that it is simply private/personal prayer.
This is surely a reasonable point. We do well to be open and up front about our own actions and their own implications. From a free speech perspective, I believe that the exclusion zones are wrong. However, we need to be clear that it is free speech and the right to protest that is at stake, not private prayer and people being allowed to go about their own business.
Yours sincerely,
Dave Williams
By email
David Robertson responds: I did not provide a “fact check” to my own article. In an article about the whole of J.D. Vance’s speech I mentioned one aspect of it and linked it to a specific article providing further information on that one point. The problem with Dave Williams’ point is that he seems to miss the fact that the Scottish government regard some prayers AS public protest – in some areas – including in private homes within exclusion zones. The sponsor of the bill, the MSP Gillian Mackay, recently admitted as much when in a BBC interview she stated that whether prayer in a private home was considered a breach of the law would depend on the perception of who was walking by! If a man like Adam Smith-Connor can be arrested and fined for standing praying – without signs, without interfering with anyone, and without protest – then none of us is safe. The Scottish government was incorrect. And we should be far more concerned about that than we seem to be.
