Greg Daly
Pro-life campaigners in the North have called on people to push the SDLP to explain why they have suspended three councillors who abstained from voting in a motion that called for women not to be intimidated by “harassment” from anti-abortion campaigners.
The Belfast City Council vote, calling for councillors to condemn any such harassment across the North, was proposed by the Green Party’s Georgina Milne, who said she had been approached by reproductive clinics reporting that people were forced to “run a gauntlet of intimidation and harassment” when they entered their centres.
Although the SDLP instructed its councillors to support the motion, Pat Convery, Declan Boyle and Kate Mullan abstained from the vote. The party whip was withdrawn from the three, who have been suspended indefinitely.
Claiming that the motion used “manipulative, misleading language like ‘harassment and intimidation’ when referring to a pro-life vigil held at the Marie Stopes Centre in Belfast”, Precious Life Ireland noted that nobody from the council had contacted the Stop Marie Stopes Campaign to ask for their version of events before voting on this motion.
Alicea Brennan from the Stop Marie Stopes Campaign condemned the motion, rejecting “false claims of harassment” and pointing out that “at no time has a ‘client’ of Marie Stopes ever made a claim of harassment to police”.
She criticised the council for having “passed a motion seeking to curtail our Human Rights under the European Convention to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly”.