The US vice-president\u2019s avid concern for Livia Tossici-Bolt\u2019s conviction is plain sinister<\/p>\n
You know the feeling: you\u2019re feeling sociable, why wouldn\u2019t you make a sign saying \u201cHere to talk, if you want to\u201d, and head for a spot outside the nearest abortion clinic? And why wouldn\u2019t some of its arriving patients want to pause before their appointments and satisfy your entirely innocent interest in their reproductive intentions?<\/p>\n
This, give or take, amounted to the case by the prominent anti-abortion campaigner, Livia Tossici-Bolt, who was on Friday found guilty of twice breaching<\/a> a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO). Her sign-holding outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic was, she had argued, not covered by a council-imposed safe zone, being \u201ca mere invitation to speak\u201d. And thus an invitation she could have happily extended to strangers just a little further from the clinic. But that did not suit Tossici-Bolt\u2019s purpose. Nor does anything prevent her from staging anti-abortion rallies, distributing literature, or expressing her views on abortion anywhere except right in abortion patients\u2019 faces outside clinics. These details, although similar regulations exist in parts of the US<\/a>, routinely fail to surface in accounts by her prominent US supporters, with whose help Tossici-Bolt has been misrepresenting the illegal undermining of UK women\u2019s reproductive rights as a noble quest for free speech.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US vice-president\u2019s avid concern for Livia Tossici-Bolt\u2019s conviction is plain sinister You know the feeling: you\u2019re feeling sociable, why wouldn\u2019t you make a sign saying \u201cHere to talk, if you want to\u201d, and head for a spot outside the nearest abortion clinic? And why wouldn\u2019t some of its arriving patients want to pause before … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}