Grandmother arrested for holding sign offering conversation outside Scottish hospital performing abortions
Scottish police arrested a 74-year-old grandmother on Thursday for offering conversation to women contemplating abortions because she was in a so-called buffer zone, which criminalizes pro-life speech.
Just days after Vice President JD Vance warned European leaders about rising censorship at the Munich Security Conference, Rose Docherty was arrested in Glasgow, Scotland near the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital for holding a sign that said: "Coercion is a crime, here to talk if you want."
Docherty was the first person to be arrested and charged under The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act, which went into effect in September 2024, the BBC reported.
The law prohibits any protests or vigils from taking place within 200m or 656ft of 30 clinics offering abortion services in Scotland, but the law specifies that the Safe Access Zone could be extended if considered appropriate.
Uk Woman Threatened With Fine For Praying Within Abortion Facility's 'Buffer Zone:' ' Grossly Orwellian'
"Everyone has the right to a consensual conversation," Docherty said. "I simply made myself available for a chat, should anybody like to approach me and speak about any matter on their mind. I didn't breach the rules of the buffer zone – I didn't harass, intimidate, or even seek to influence anyone. I simply stood there, available to speak with love and compassion."
Read On The Fox News App
"It isn't right to deprive anyone of the right to take up my offer to talk," she added. "And it isn't right to censor zones within our country from thoughts, beliefs and conversations that authorities may simply disapprove of. Buffer zones aren't 'pro-choice' – they deprive women of the choice to have a chat outside the clinic. That isn't right."
When reached for comment, Police Scotland directed Fox News Digital to its public release regarding the arrest.
"We were made aware of a group of protesters having gathered in the Hardgate Road area of Glasgow around 2.05pm on Wednesday, 19 February, 2025," the statement said. "Officers attended and a 74-year-old woman was arrested and charged in connection with breach of the exclusion zone. She will be reported to the Procurator Fiscal."
England and Wales have a similar version of the law that criminalizes the act of "influencing" someone's decision to "access" abortion services within 150 meters, or almost 500 feet, of any abortion facility. The United Kingdom expanded its so-called "buffer zone" law to apply to the area around every abortion facility nationwide starting Oct. 31.
The move is an attempt to stop the harassment of patients seeking abortions, but critics and pro-life activists argue the laws are an affront to free speech.
"It's devastating to see an innocent, 74-year-old woman handcuffed and arrested just for offering a consensual conversation," Lois McLatchie Miller, a Scottish spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom International, told Fox News Digital. "JD Vance was right to raise concerns – free speech has been eroded in Scotland to a worrying extent."
"In Scotland and across the UK, authorities have been over-zealous in using 'buffer zone' laws to prosecute people just for their thoughts, or for standing peacefully," she added. "The government should clarify at once that silent prayer, and consensual conversation, are not crimes."
Last week, Vance spoke about the Safe Access Zones Act, in which he said people who live within safe access zones had been sent letters by the Scottish government warning them about praying within their homes. The Scottish government said no letters were sent telling people they couldn't pray in their homes and instead explained that only "intentional or reckless behaviour" was covered by the act, the BBC reported.
But, McLatchie Miller said prohibitions of the Scottish buffer zone law even extend inside people's homes, if they live within 200 meters of an abortion facility. A letter sent to residents explains that the law, in general, applies to public places within the area, but can also apply to "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 offense if they can be seen or heard within the Zone and are done intentionally or recklessly."
Twitter Erupts Over Clip Of Uk Woman Arrested For Silently Praying Across From Abortion Clinic: 'Terrifying'
"That means, if someone was to 'recklessly' influence someone's decision about abortion from inside their house, they could be committing a crime," she added. "Scottish authorities sent letters to local residents to warn them of this.""Could it be considered 'reckless' to pray by an open window? What about having a conversation about abortion in your garden while people pass by?" she asked. "If someone claims to be 'influenced' by such behaviour, this innocent expression of speech or faith could be unjustly snagged under the law."
Authorities can impose fines of up to £10,000 ($12,600) "or be given an unlimited fine, depending on the court procedure" for anyone who is found to have breached a Safe Access Zone, according to the Scottish government. Citizens can also report a group or individual they believe to be breaking the law by contacting Police Scotland, who are responsible for enforcing Safe Access Zones.
Scottish Greens spokesperson for health, Gillian Mackay MSP, who spearheaded the law, told Fox News Digital that nobody should feel intimidated when accessing healthcare. She also said she is proud that the law has put an end to "protests, graphic banners and unnerving spectating that people were forced to pass to enter hospitals."
"There is harmful misinformation being peddled both in and out of US political spheres that shows how little these critics know about the Act, or it is part of their fear-mongering agenda to misrepresent it," she said. "Nobody is being prosecuted for their thoughts or for praying in their home as the Vice President claimed. For senior politicians to pretend otherwise is plainly ridiculous and dangerous."
"Abortion rights are human rights," she added to Fox News Digital. "Every individual in Scotland has the right to privacy in terms of their healthcare, and my Act ensures they are protected and their privacy is maintained when accessing these services."
Mackay also claimed that the U.S. government is a "clear threat" to reproductive rights.
"Today and every day I will stand with the millions of people across the US who oppose the misogynistic and anti-choice agenda of Donald Trump and JD Vance," she added.
Priest Charged After Praying Outside Abortion Clinic Decries Criminalization Of Thought
Notably, Docherty was offering conversation in her personal capacity on the day she was arrested, but she serves as a leader in the Scottish chapter of the pro-life 40 Days for Life organization. Shawn Carney, the president of the organization, told Fox News Digital that unlike buffer zones in the U.S., where a small area around an abortion clinic is off limits to demonstrators, in the UK, you can't have a pro-life opinion and stand in a restricted area.
"We're in 64 countries around the world, and we have more free speech in Berlin and Moscow and China than we do in Glasgow or London," he said. "That is a fact from our experience."
"It's your country, you can ban whoever you want," he added. "You can just say: 'You're not allowed in the public square,' but you can't say that and say that you support free speech. So don't say that you're for free speech, you're not because you don't allow it. And so that's my issue with them, they run around as if they're heroes, patting themselves on the back, and they're an embarrassment to the West."Original article source: Grandmother arrested for holding sign offering conversation outside Scottish hospital performing abortions
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The UK, Germany and Canada have slashed foreign aid this year, deepening damage done by US cuts, analysis shows
Western countries have slashed foreign aid budgets this year and reductions will steepen in 2026, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada cutting the most, according to a new analysis from the Center for Global Development (CGD). The aid cuts will mean 'significant losses' for many developing nations, according to the analysis from the DC-based think tank, shared exclusively with CNN. Ethiopia is projected to lose the most aid in nominal terms, with Jordan, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo also hit particularly hard. Smaller nations will also be hammered by the reduction in foreign aid, with Lesotho, Micronesia and Eswatini each losing around 50% of their aid. 'It's setting fire to the bold ambitions to solve poverty and transform developing countries,' Lee Crawfurd, one of the authors of the report, told CNN. 'It's some of the poorest, most fragile places in the world that are going to be hardest hit.' The analysis looked at projections of bilateral aid – money provided directly to another country rather than routed through multilateral organizations such as United Nations agencies or the World Bank – for 2025 and 2026. The US is projected to cut the most, with a projected 56% reduction compared to levels two years ago. The Trump administration's gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already left a hole in many international aid budgets, and several other Western nations are following suit rather than filling the void. 'A big, big chunk of overall cuts in the next couple of years are going to be from the US pulling out, rather than other countries. But these other countries are making things worse,' said Crawfurd, a senior research fellow at the CGD. The UK aid cuts are estimated to represent a roughly 39% reduction compared to 2023 levels of spending. Meanwhile, Germany is cutting about 27%, Canada 25% and France 19% of their international aid budgets. The true level of aid cuts remains unclear, as the Trump administration's proposed budget and other government proposals are still making their way through legislatures. But some funding cuts are almost guaranteed. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in February that his government would increase the UK's defense spending by cutting its aid budget to 0.3% of gross national income in 2027, its lowest level since 1999. Many organizations and aid workers have raised alarm about European governments pitting aid budgets against defense spending. 'Cutting the already lean aid budget is a false economy and will only increase division and amounts to a betrayal of the world's most vulnerable people,' said Halima Begum, head of Oxfam GB. 'It is a false dichotomy to pit international cooperation to tackle poverty against national security interests in order to avoid tax increases.' Crawfurd said that bilateral aid is a 'really small part of government budgets' and the money for defense or security could be found elsewhere. 'It's a choice… it's a political choice,' he added. The think tank wrote in its analysis that 'one striking takeaway is that some countries are projected to lose large amounts of ODA (official development assistance) simply because of who their main donors are – while others are projected to lose very little' – a game of chance, with losses not matching up to the recipient country's needs. Yemen, for example, is projected to experience a 19% fall in its bilateral funding compared to 2023, while its 'comparable' neighbor country Somalia is projected to lose about 39%. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also warned that multilateral aid cuts are threatening efforts to tackle 44 of the highest-priority, protracted humanitarian crises. As of April, only 11.9% of the funding for UN response plans had been covered. 'Every year, the UN has been helping more than 100 million people in the world as they go through the worst time of their lives in wars and disasters. But let's be clear: we won't reach the level of funding in 2025 that we've seen in previous years,' Anja Nitzsche, OCHA's chief of partnerships and resource mobilization told CNN in a statement. 'Vulnerable families are being left without food, clean water, healthcare, shelter or protection in places such as Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine, Myanmar and Afghanistan.' The CGD is urging Western donors to reallocate aid to the poorest countries to try to 'ensure that resources are directed to populations in greatest need.' Western countries also need to improve coordination to mitigate further damage, especially as they are withdrawing from countries receiving aid, the think tank said. In some countries, the cuts will change who the largest donor is, which 'can lead to major shifts in what gets funded and how,' according to the CGD. For example, Portugal will likely overtake the US in aid to Angola, and Japan is projected to overtake France in Egypt. 'A new lead donor may not continue the same programs' or may take time to get up and running, according to the analysis. Giving a larger share of aid to multilateral organizations can also help improve international cooperation and cut down on duplication of aid efforts. 'Coordination is an ongoing challenge,' Crawfurd told CNN. 'The easiest way to do that is just to fund big multilateral funds like the World Bank.'
Forbes
33 minutes ago
- Forbes
Global Gender Gap Shrinks But Parity Is Still More Than A Century Away
The gender gap around the world is closing at its fastest pace since before the Covid-19 pandemic. But even at the current rate of progress, full parity is well over a hundred years away, new research reveals. According to the 19th edition of the World Economic Forum's annual Global Gender Gap Report, the gap across 148 economies around the world now stands at 68.8% when examining factors including economic opportunities, education, health, and political leadership. When looking at the 145 economies that were examined both this year and last, the gender gap contracted by 0.3 percentage points in 2025—from 68.4% in 2024. That marked the fastest annual contraction since before Covid-19 spread around the world in 2020, stalling or even revering progress on many metrics, such as women's labor force participation, in some countries. Despite this uptick, however, and based on the WEF's calculations, it will still take 123 years to reach full parity in gender globally, and that's assuming today's pace of progress doesn't slacken. 'The progress made in this edition was driven primarily by significant strides in political empowerment and economic participation, while educational attainment and health and survival maintained near-parity levels above 95%,' the authors of the report write. They add, however, that even though women today represent 41.2% of the global paid workforce, 'a stark leadership gap persists with women holding only 28.8% of top leadership positions.' The 2025 report showed that, while no economy has yet achieved full gender parity, some are getting closer. For a 16th consecutive year, for example, Iceland led the index with the smallest gender gap of just 92.6%. Indeed, Iceland is the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap. The country's northern European neighbors—Finland, Norway and Sweden—have all closed more than 80% of their gap and have also consistently ranked in the top 10 in every edition of the report since 2006. Other countries in this year's top 10 include the United Kingdom, the Republic of Moldova, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and Namibia. Overall, the authors of the report note that there's a slight correlation between the current income levels of the countries covered and their gender gaps, with richer economies being marginally more gender equal. At the aggregate level, the authors note, economies considered to be high-income have closed 74.3% of their gender gap, which is slightly more than the averages observed across lower income countries. The authors emphasize, however, that this correlation 'is low and does not indicate causation.' In other words, being a high-income nation does not automatically mean that gender gaps are smaller.
CBS News
43 minutes ago
- CBS News
Clock is ticking on U.S. nuclear proposal to Iran, as Israel mulls military strikes
The clock is ticking on President Trump's proposal to Iran to accept restrictions on its nuclear program — and possibly avert a potential military strike by Israel, which could involve U.S. support. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Mr. Trump Monday regarding the diplomatic efforts and publicly announced Mr. Trump had told him Iran was expected to respond in the coming days. In the meantime, Steve Witkoff, the president's Mideast envoy, plans to hold a sixth round of talks with Iran Sunday. Those talks will be held in the small Gulf state of Oman, according to a source familiar with the plans. U.S. and Israeli officials confirmed diplomatic efforts are still underway, though multiple U.S. officials say they believe Israel may be preparing an imminent military strike against Iran. On Thursday, the United Nations' Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, stated that Iran is not complying with nuclear non-proliferation obligations. Iran swiftly condemned the finding as politically motivated. Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, in a post on X, accused the UK, France and Germany, the three major European powers collectively known as the E3, of fomenting confrontation. The E3 remains a party to the 2015 international nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA. The U.S. withdrew from the agreement in 2018, and Iran partially withdrew in 2019. The European countries who remain party to the deal could seek to trigger the snapback of UN sanctions on Iran in the coming months. "Another major strategic mistake by the E3 will compel Iran to react strongly," Araghchi said in the post. Mr. Trump publicly declared on Truth Social last week that he would not allow Iran to enrich any uranium, but the White House has not so far not disclosed the contents of the nuclear proposal. Nearly two weeks ago, Witkoff transmitted to Iran via Omani officials a proposal from the U.S. Two sources familiar with the details of that proposal told CBS News that the U.S. does not want Iran to develop any domestic enrichment of nuclear fuel for what it claims is a civilian program. To maintain that limited program, the two sources said Iran would have to procure the enriched nuclear fuel from outside the country, rather than enrich it on Iranian soil. Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Iran last Wednesday during a lengthy call that lasted over an hour, according to Mr. Trump's post on Truth Social. Mr. Trump said that time is running out on Iran's decision-making about nuclear weapons. He said Putin "suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran" and that he could be helpful in concluding the talks. Tehran and Moscow have forged an informal military alliance in Ukraine, with Russian forces using Iranian-produced Shahed drones to bomb Ukrainian targets, including civilians. Moscow could play a few roles in the negotiations with Iran, a source familiar with the proposal explained to CBS News. Russia could be a source for nuclear fuel purchase by Iran, for instance, or it could also be the receiving country for the storage of the existing enriched uranium produced by Iran. This would be similar to the role it played under the 2015 international nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA. There are also other ideas proposed by the U.S., too. Axios was first to report that Oman suggested establishing a regional consortium to enrich uranium for civilian purposes under monitoring by the IAEA and the U.S. A source familiar with the proposal indicated that this was one of the ideas presented to Tehran. During testimony before a Senate panel Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fielded questions about the diplomatic efforts. "There are plenty of indications that they have been moving their way towards something that would look a lot like a nuclear weapon," Hegseth said in response to a question about whether Tehran's nuclear program was peaceful. The powerful chair of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee – GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas – appeared to seize on that statement in a social media post in which he said, "Iran's terrorist regime is actively working towards a nuclear weapon." But U.S. intelligence assesses that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. U.S. intelligence has also assessed that Tehran has continued since 2018 to enrich nuclear fuel at levels close to weapons grade. Due to that enrichment, U.S. intelligence assesses that Iran is currently a threshold nuclear state, which means it could decide to pursue a weaponization program within relatively short order. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has long been a skeptic of diplomatic attempts to restrain Iran's nuclear program and often points to documents stolen by the Mossad back in 2018 as evidence of past Iranian ambition to acquire its own nuclear weapon. Netanyahu has been pressing Mr. Trump to provide U.S. support for Israeli military action against Iran, arguing that Tehran is in a historically weak position, given the success of the Israeli decapitation of its militia Hezbollah and its decimation of Hamas in Gaza. While Mr. Trump has held off on sanctioning Russia, which the administration has said is to avoid disrupting diplomatic outreach on Ukraine, he has sanctioned Iran amid an attempt at diplomacy regarding the nuclear program. Last Friday, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against 30 individuals tied to two Iranian brothers alleged to have helped launder billions of dollars through front companies that the regime uses to help fund its nuclear and missile programs. CBS News obtained a classified version of a report presented to member states by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi. The report notes that Iran is the only non-nuclear weapon state in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60%, which remains a matter of serious concern. Uranium for civilian use is enriched to a much lower rate, between 3% and 5%. Mark Dubowitz, of U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told CBS News that the report proved that "Iran is a serial violator of the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty], stonewalling the IAEA on its past — and possibly ongoing — nuclear weaponization work." Dubowitz and other pro-Israel advocates are raising alarms and argue the Iranian regime should not have any right to enrich uranium on its soil. The IAEA director general also reiterated in his report his call for Iran to cooperate with IAEA inspections — or risk "the Agency will not be in a position to provide assurance that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful." Israel has an undeclared nuclear weapons program, and the IAEA has no access to its facility at Dimona, which is believed to provide the fuel for its weapons program. The IAEA does monitor the site known as Soreq. At this point, Israel maintains a strategic edge as the only nuclear power in the Mideast.
