‘I’ve been spat on, I’ve been abused,’ says former Green Party leader Clare Bailey, who used to volunteer at a private Belfast clinic’
On one of Belfast’s busiest streets, Clare Bailey is blinking away tears. Looking up at signage attached to a lamp-post around the corner from an NHS clinic providing abortions, she breaks into a smile. Her daughter, Jude, insists on taking her photograph.
It is seven years since Bailey, a former Northern Ireland Green Party leader and Assembly member, tabled a Private Members’ Bill at Stormont calling for the introduction of so-called buffer zones to prevent anti-abortion protests and harassment outside healthcare facilities offering terminations.
SOURCES: Irish Times, by Seanín Graham, 30 September 2023 ; BBC, 29 September 2023 ; Placard: ENGENDER, 2022