In May 2022, Green MSP Gillian Mackay launched the consultation on her Member’s Bill aiming to protect people from anti-abortion protests and harassment outside healthcare centres by creating safe access zones.

One year on since the consultation launched and 12,000 responses later, healthandcare.scot spoke with Gillian Mackay MSP to hear about how her Member’s Bill is progressing, what she has learnt from the responses so far – and the state of safe access to abortion care in Scotland.

Gillian Mackay has not been short of support for her proposed law creating a safe space for women attending clinics and the staff working there.

BMA Scotland and the Royal College of GPs (RCGPs) quickly put its weight behind the Bill, with RCGP Scotland Chair, Dr Chris Williams, agreeing that the protests should not occur outside healthcare settings – stating patients and staff have the right to access care and their workplaces free from fear or harassment.

With a staggering 12,000 responses received in the response to the call for views in the following three months, Ms Mackay and her team are still in the process of analysing these.

She explains many responses detail the challenges of stigma and judgement and the need for greater safety and confidentiality in accessing healthcare.

Others, she says, cite “profits made” by abortion care providers, highlighting the need for greater education on NHS reproductive service.

She adds:

“There’s lots in these 12,000 responses but I think the thing I'd be keen to stress is that whatever the actual numerical results are, this isn't an opinion poll, it's a consultation.

“Then reasons as to why people would support it one way or another, what else they would like to see from the legislation, whether 150m is enough and whether there’s other things that we haven’t thought of.”

Earlier this month, Ms Mackay confirmed that the consultation analysis and final proposal for her buffer zone bill are to be published by the end of June ahead of Holyrood’s summer recess.

However, she explained that this is no easy feat for her office:

“I think the biggest hurdle has been the number of consultation responses received and how much work that makes. I have a staff team of two full-timers, three part-timers and me – and not everyone is working on this Bill.

“We’re trying our absolute best and working as hard as we can, and always welcome constructive feedback and questions.”

Consultation analysis

The Scottish government has offered “phenomenal” support throughout the process says Ms Mackay, but the consultation must be carried out by her office as it was put to the public and stakeholders that way.

She added that external consultation analysis would take longer than working in-house because of procurement and GDPR processes.

Ms Mackay tells healthandcare.scot that she hopes to help amplify patient perspectives while developing the Bill, including some “harrowing” testimony from those experienced protesters:

“I think the good thing to have now is all the data we've got from the consultation and lots of people sharing their stories.

“It’s now about providing people with those voices and using our platform to do that, and I hope that many colleagues across the chamber will.”

While all the responses are set to be published with the consultation analysis this June, RCGP Scotland shared its response, citing a violation of people’s right to medical privacy by the protestors:

‘People can seek abortion care for a multitude of reasons, all of which are valid. Protestors imposing beliefs at a time of vulnerability is exploitation, not care.

‘We are similarly concerned that protests could deter people from accessing the multitude of other services that can be found at these healthcare settings, such as rape crisis services, counselling services, neo-natal services, sexual health services, LGBT support services, and so on.’

However, not all consultation responses are as helpful to the minister, meaning a content warning will accompany the analysis:

“There’ll be a massive content warning, and it’s probably better for everybody’s health not to read all the responses.”

She adds that while they remove any defamatory statements, they cannot avoid publishing people’s consultation responses which contain statements that are factually incorrect.

Other responses attack Ms Mackay for bringing forward the Bill:

“I’ve been told I’m vile, that I’m everything that’s evil. To a certain extent for me it has to be water off a duck’s back, and they are saying this because they don’t like what you are doing.”

A bill delayed?

Concerns have also been raised by supporters, including Back Off Scotland – the campaign group at the centre of safe access. The organisation has expressed frustration with the pace of progress and the recent announcement that the ministerial working group has come to a close.

Ms Mackay says while the ministerial working group was always intended to be “short life”, the question of introducing another group to shape the legislation is one for the government’s health ministers.

Around last year’s parliamentary recess, Carol Mochan MSP called for the bill to be treated as “emergency legislation” and for then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to recall recess to pass it through parliament.

Ten months on and Ms Mackay says the team are working as quickly as possible:

“The fact that we haven't put a timetable on this has been so beneficial because it has made government work as quickly as possible and that's not somewhere that they're always comfortable with.”        

Ms Mackay says some critiques can feel “demoralising” for the team who don’t have a pre-existing piece of legislation to work from:

“My staff team are working their absolute socks off – we cannot do any more without not sleeping.

“There are no more hours in the day and I also have that problem if this is all I do all week, other things get dropped.

“As our health spokesperson, as a regional MSP, there are plenty of other things that come up during a week that need attention.”

She says that one benefit of working with a Member’s Bill – despite taking longer – is “nicking all the best ideas” from the other UK nations to incorporate into Scotland’s bill.

Ms Mackay adds that she has received lots of constructive criticism, too:

“There have been some really helpful suggestions from stakeholders and people and some good questions of us, that have really made us think – which have been hugely helpful and have added another dynamic to the to the discussion.

“I'd never want to put anyone off having that space to critique or ask questions, that’s what we’re here for and I’d encourage anyone to get in touch that has questions, but remind everyone this isn’t a government Bill.”

“It’s always useful to have voices that are going ‘What's happening? How can we help? What else can we do?’ And I said to MSP colleagues too, come and ask me, if you don't know what's happening come and ask me, I'm not difficult to find.”

Healthcare staff, campaigners and trade union organisations have also contributed “fantastic work” by gathering responses and insights to make the bill as robust as possible – from patient perspectives to patient advocacy and clinicians:

“When you ask clinicians – even about what they need – they always talk about what their patients need.

“It just shows how dedicated the clinicians and wider staff are in the first place but also how much of their job satisfaction is contingent on doing the best for their patients. They want to go to work and provide the best care possible – without being disrupted or having to rebook appoints because people are scared to come or are experiencing further trauma.

“They want to go to their work in peace, be able to do their job and come home and that’s not an awful lot to ask.”

She adds that the ability to anonymise testimony has helped people feel safe to share, especially with the additional degree of separation facilitated by groups like Back Off Scotland.

Moving forward

She says that once the final proposal is lodged, the next stage will be ensuring that any amendments are comprehensive so there is not too much back and forth extending the timeline, adding that parliamentary timescales will come into play.

Ms Mackay adds that she and many colleagues believe that the bill should land with the parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport committee – of which she is a member – for the first stage of scrutiny:

“This is about protecting access to healthcare – although protecting access to healthcare is an equalities issue, this is more purely an access to healthcare issue.

“There's obviously a conversation we need to have about committee workloads – but I’m hoping to have those conversations relatively soon to give us a better idea of what's coming but also to give that heads up to the committees that this will be coming and it will be coming pretty quickly.”

Read more: GPs back abortion protest buffer zones bill; Has progress been made on women's health?; Analysis: Why people are left behind

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