The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has released a new explainer taking the position that a wide variety of innocuous religious behaviors in hospitals, up to visibly carrying Bibles, could be illegal under controversial “abortion access” bubble zone legislation.
On July 2, the policing board published a response to a recent question at a board engagement event, concerning what the “Abortion Service (Safe Access Zones) Act (Northern Ireland) 2023,” which establishes 100-meter “safe zones” around facilities that commit abortions, “means for the routine work of clergy in hospitals generally and specifically.”
The law penalizes “behave[ing] within a Safe Access Zone in a way that influences, prevents access for, or causes harassment, alarm or distress to a person attending for abortion services – whether directly or indirectly,” regardless of whether it was the offender’s intention to do so.
PSNI claims that the “vast majority of hospital chaplaincy and pastoral ministry is entirely unaffected by this legislation,” as would be most clergy and religious visitors, “unless their activities bring them in a Safe Access Zone in connection with abortion,” because “[m]ost hospital wards and clinical areas fall entirely out of the scope of the Act and ministry within those areas continues without restriction.”
However, it goes on to describe scenarios in which “Prayer with patients during end-of-life care,” “Scripture reading requested by patients or families,” “Carrying Bibles or religious material through public areas of hospitals,” “Consensual pastoral ministry within wards or hospital grounds,” and “Visible religious practice within areas covered by Safe Access Zones” could all potentially run afoul of the law, depending on whether or not somebody within the vicinity takes offense.
“Describing conduct as pastoral, prayerful or religious in nature does not determine whether an offence has been committed,” PSNI explains. “The test is not how the person describes their own behaviour – it is whether that behaviour, assessed objectively and in its full context, influenced, impeded, or caused distress to a protected person, or was reckless as to whether it did so.”
Abortion proponents in many countries enact “bubble” or “buffer” zones around abortion facilities to suppress peaceful protests and life-saving sidewalk counseling on the public property outside them, under the pretext of keeping entry from being “obstructed” through “intimidation.” But the real impact is to stifle freedom of speech and religious expression, in the process stopping abortion-considering women from hearing appeals and information that could change their minds.
In May, retired pastor Clive Johnston was convicted under Northern Ireland’s Abortion Services Act for the “crime” of preaching on John 3:16 at the edge of a buffer zone across from Coleraine’s Causeway Hospital, which commits abortions. He faces £450 in fines, though is expected to appeal. Claire Brennan, a 54-year-old mother of four, is also on trial under the law, on three counts of “doing an act inside a safe access zone” outside Causeway Hospital.