The call for buffer zones outside abortion clinics, where individuals cannot speak or even think about abortion, was supposedly introduced to protect women from interference in accessing these clinics.

Leaving aside the fact that harassment is already against the law and an arrestable offence, it is evident that for some MPs this move to ban speech against abortion won’t stop outside clinics.

This is nowhere more evident than by the abortion lobby’s government representative, Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow.

As chief proposer of Buffer Zones, Creasy commented in The Guardian: “It does not stop free speech on abortion. It does not stop people protesting. It simply says you shouldn’t have the right to do this in the face of somebody”.

Yet Creasy has consistently weaponised the claim of “harassment” to shut down (or attempt to shut down) speech, literature and promotion of any views that oppose her extreme abortion policies; most chillingly including images of living babies in the womb.

Not in our town centre!

Working for the pro-life advocacy group Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK (CBR UK), I have experienced first hand Creasy’s repeated false allegations of “harassment” against those who peacefully challenge her. As seen during our campaign in Walthamstow to expose the MP’s plans to decriminalise abortion, in 2019.

Creasy demanded Clear Channel advertising company pull down our billboard poster of a 9-week living fetus — which they did.

Then during one of our public education displays in the town centre, Creasy’s council illegally confiscated our banner (which was admitted in a court of law) and issued our team leader, Christian Hacking, with a Community Protection Notice. This banned Hacking from coming back to Walthamstow with any “large images of unborn foetuses and / or aborted foetuses”.

She also called upon her constituents to report our CBR UK Educators to the police as “a form of harassment” for simply seeing them!

No leaflets in our homes!

Then four years later, at the beginning of this year, she complained that our postcard campaign, which we distributed through the doors of homes in Walthamstow, “shocked” and “distressed” her constituents. What was the offensive image? Again a beautiful photo of a living baby in the womb – this time an 8-week embryo.

Creasy felt dismayed that, unlike Clear Channel who bowed to her censorious commands in 2019, the Advertising Standards Authority refused to intervene as they explained it is deemed inappropriate for the “advertising self-regulatory system to regulate leaflets and other non-paid media that advocate for a cause or idea”.

Creasy said that while anti-abortion activists have the right to campaign, they should not be leafleting people’s homes.

So, no billboards, no public education displays, no leaflets through doors, and certainly no “graphic” images of living babies in the womb — what does that leave us with?

Perhaps there is still hope in democracy…

So this last general election, I personally stood against Stella Creasy as an independent candidate for Walthamstow, under the Vote Life banner.

When Creasy became aware of this, she continued to attack the work of CBR UK to The Guardian by declaring that she would want a police presence at local hustings if I were to participate: “It’s sad but necessary, given the history of intimidating and threatening behaviour from the CBRUK, that a police presence would be required for them to take part in such a debate.”

So I wasn’t surprised, although slightly amused at the absurdity of it, when I turned up to the climate change hustings event to find police at the door, and Creasy coming and going with a bodyguard.

Stella Creasy has created her own make-believe bubble where she is always the victim and anyone who publicly opposes and exposes her indefensible policies, is intimidatory.

Thankfully Creasy also couldn’t stop my leaflets from being distributed through the doors of Walthamstow constituents, as is every standing candidate’s right. Despite apologising to her constituents for my leaflets and the images in them (of living unborn babies at various ages), she shared that she had raised it with the Advertising Standards Authority, but admitted that she “can’t stop the anti abortion leaflets going through your [Walthamstow constituents] doors as they are my opponents at the ballot box so can’t interfere”.

Stella Creasy herself is at the forefront of efforts to have the ban on silent prayer outside clinics enforced as part of the Buffer Zones guidance. Yet we received the good news this week that Isabel Vaughn-Spruce, the campaigner arrested for praying in her head outside an abortion facility, was awarded a compensation payout for wrongful arrest.

It is imperative that all who care about free speech continue to defend this fundamental right, holding to account those who seek to shut it down in action, despite claiming to fight for it with words.