Despite Livia Tossici-Bolt’s conviction, the US is not finished with making abortion a UK culture war issue
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Version 0 of 1. We should all be worried that the rightwing organisation Alliance Defending Freedom has been increasing its activities in this country I couldn’t sleep the other night, because I made the fatal mistake of reading about US politics directly before bed, specifically the executive order calling for the removal of “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian museums. If US politics were a film, I’d say we’re somewhere in between having read aloud from the book that summons demons as a joke, and the final bloodbath. If JD Vance rewriting history isn’t sinister enough, then came the news that the US state department will be “monitoring” a UK woman’s abortion buffer zone case (why does everything they say always sound so creepy?) They are “concerned”, apparently, “about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom”. The case is that of Livia Tossici-Bolt – who held up a sign reading “Here to talk if you want” outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic and was this morning convicted of breaching the buffer zone. Her case was being funded by the UK branch of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a rightwing organisation with links to the White House, which has increased its expenditure and activities in this country of late. It has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the US. Ominously, this isn’t the first time the US has invoked the UK’s abortion clinic buffer zone legislation. In a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance made the false claim that people who live within safe access zones had been sent letters by the Scottish government warning them about praying within their homes. Those comments were dangerous scaremongering, and were condemned as such, while this latest intervention has been blasted as “unjustifiable interference” by the former UK supreme court judge Lord Sumption. There were reports this week that the US was intending to use these spurious concerns over free speech as leverage in trade negotiations, but the business secretary has denied this. Nevertheless, they form part of an increasingly alarming mood music regarding reproductive rights in the UK. “The US state department claims that its concerns over buffer zones are around free speech, but abortion is not a free speech issue,” Sian Norris, author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, tells me. “People can be anti-abortion wherever they like, but they cannot use their speech to harm others and repress women’s human rights.” Norris is concerned but not surprised about the involvement of ADF and 40 Days for Life – a movement to end abortion – whose Bournemouth branch is led by Tossici-Bolt. Why so much interest by US politicians and pressure groups? I don’t believe for a moment that the likes of Vance are truly het up about abortion clinics in the UK. Do they, like Farage, believe that there is some sort of far-right groundswell of opinion in the UK that is waiting to be exploited? I’m not sure there’s an appetite for an abortion culture war here: while I always hesitate to invoke concepts such as national character, I don’t believe that citizens of the UK generally approve of private individuals being impeded from accessing medical treatment. It isn’t polite, or decent, and what people do with their bodies is largely regarded as their own business. As the latest social attitudes survey shows, support for abortion is at an all-time high. That isn’t to say that the question is settled: Labour must do that by putting decriminalisation back on the table as soon as possible. Perhaps all that doesn’t matter. Vance et al know that these comments will play well with the rightwing Christians at home. Having largely won the war in the US by depriving millions of women there of their fundamental human rights with the rollback of Roe v Wade, they are still not satisfied. UK abortion buffer zones are a useful issue to add to the US government’s main culture war – the idea that they are liberating people from “woke” and getting free speech back. Despite the fact that, as Lord Sumption noted, one of the biggest threats to free speech right now is the US, this makes it look as though it is the defender of peaceful protest both at home and abroad. It’s an effective distraction tactic. “OK, so we are literally censoring our national museums right now, but look at how we are supporting this poor woman, who simply held a sign up outside an abortion clinic!” Cynical leaks suggesting that “there’s no free trade without free speech” add to this deliberately crafted impression of the US as a global guardian of freedom of expression. In a way it doesn’t really matter whether UK abortion buffer zone legislation forms a part of trade negotiations: it’s enough that the US has implied that it has and will. Whether Tossici-Bolt’s conviction will prompt further attempts to interfere remains to be seen, but the AFD’s increased interest in the UK is terrifying. This battle isn’t over. There will no doubt be those who think my fears are hysterical, but people said the same when feminists publicly feared for Roe v Wade, and women’s bodies have been battlegrounds for so long that hypervigilance is a natural response. If you’ll forgive me for returning to my horror movie analogy: when you live in a haunted house, you start to see threat around every corner. As for our government – will it robustly defend any perceived attack on British women’s human rights, and publicly condemn the brazen use of US cash to try to influence our laws? I’m not holding my breath. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. |