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JD Vance has been labelled an “extremist” after he launched a broadside against the UK’s efforts to protect women seeking an abortion.
The US vice-president’s criticisms of UK and Scottish policies on safe access zones around abortion clinics – part of a wide-ranging tirade against Europe on Friday – were derided as inaccurate and misogynistic by a number of groups, politicians and governments.
Heidi Stewart, the chief executive of Bpas, the UK’s leading provider of abortion services, said safe zones – buffer areas of 150 metres around abortion clinics designed to stop women being harassed with leaflets, shown pictures of foetuses, or having to pass by vigils – were vital to protect women’s access to essential healthcare in an “overwhelmingly pro-choice country”.
“Bpas ... will always remain proud to stand against misogynistic and anti-democratic interference with British women’s reproductive rights by foreign extremists, whether they are the vice-president of the US or not,” she said.
The Labour MP Stella Creasy, who campaigned for the safe zones which were introduced last year, posted a picture of a scene from the dystopian television series The Handmaid’s Tale alongside with the words: “And so it begins … ” She accused Vance of calling “for the right to harass women having an abortion” because “our bodies are their battleground, our human rights their target”.
In Vance’s speech at the Munich security conference, he said the UK had “placed the basic liberties of religious Britons … in the crosshairs”, citing the prosecution of Adam Smith-Connor, a physiotherapist and army veteran. Vance said he had been charged with the “heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own”.
Smith-Connor, who is receiving legal support from Alliance Defending Freedom International, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group in the US, was convicted of breaching a safe zone in October last year after refusing repeated requests to move away from outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth in November 2022.
A community officer spoke to him for an hour and 40 minutes and asked him to leave, but he refused. Smith-Connor was handed a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay more than £9,000 costs after the case brought by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council.
Vance also claimed the Scottish government had distributed letters to citizens whose houses lay “within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law”. Shortly after his statement, a Scottish government spokesperson said: “The vice-president’s claim is incorrect. Private prayer at home is not prohibited within safe access zones and no letter has ever suggested it was.”
The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Act, introduced last year, banned “silent prayer” to prevent mass silent vigils that have been used by large groups of US pro-life protesters such as 40 Days for Life. The law states that the actions are only banned if they are likely to cause alarm or distress to someone accessing abortion services.
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The Scottish Green MSP Gillian Mackay, who pushed for the introduction of safe zones, said Vance was spreading “shocking and shameless misinformation”. She said: “He is one of the most powerful people in the world but he is peddling total nonsense and dangerous scaremongering.”
The managing director for the Abortion Support Network, Camille Kumar, accused him of “dog-whistle messaging” and an attack on “fragile” women’s rights. “It is deeply concerning that within days of pardoning [protesters] in the US for their harassment of women and pregnant people outside abortion clinics, JD Vance is now trying to stir up anti-abortion rhetoric in the UK.”
The director of the End Violence, Andrea Simon, said: “Safe access buffer zones were introduced to ensure that women can safely access abortion services without fear of harassment. That is vital, because abortion is a fundamental healthcare right for women in the UK, which must be protected.”
