Elderly Scottish Woman Arrested for “Silent Vigil” Outside of Abortion Clinic

by Ken Ham on March 4, 2025
Featured in Ken Ham Blog

Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, is equipped with special laser technology that can provide “interventional fetal therapy” to treat babies while they’re still in the womb—an astounding technology that is saving the lives of unborn babies. But at that same hospital, a woman can book an appointment to have her baby poisoned, dismembered, and removed from her womb. What a shocking contrast!

This is vile, and it is evil. And in an effort to save lives, or at least offer hope and help to mothers who might feel coerced or pressured into an abortion (as many do), a 74-year-old Scottish woman, Rose Docherty, was standing outside that hospital with a sign that read “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.” According to reports, she stood silently with her sign—a sign that didn’t even mention abortion! She was approached by police who accused her of breaking the nation’s “buffer zone” law with her “silent vigil.” This buffer zone law established a 656-foot (200-meter) zone around places providing abortions, and it “prohibits behavior considered likely to ‘influence someone’s private decision to use abortion services, prevent or get in the way of someone using abortion services (or) harass or distress someone trying to use abortion services.’”

This buffer zone even extends to the homes geographically within the zone, with an official letter distributed to local homes stating,

Activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area between the protected premises and the boundary of a Zone could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the Zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.

Activists and politicians in Scotland (and other places, including here in the US) who support such laws aren’t “pro-choice”—they are pro-abortion. They don’t want women to have options, to be potentially dissuaded from abortion, or to be given the opportunity to stop and think about their decision. They want these women to kill their babies with as much ease and convenience as possible—and without so much as a prick of the conscience!

Rose Docherty has since been arrested and charged with violating this law. Meanwhile, the ones murdering unborn children in the hospital continue their bloody work. What an absolute mockery of justice!

Please remember to pray for Rose and for others in Scotland who are working hard to save lives in a very anti-life country.

Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
those who frame injustice by statute?
They band together against the life of the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.
But the Lord has become my stronghold,
and my God the rock of my refuge.
He will bring back on them their iniquity
and wipe them out for their wickedness;
the Lord our God will wipe them out. (Psalm 94:20–23)

Get More Answers on Answers News

This item was discussed Monday on Answers News with cohosts Bryan Osborne, Dr. Jennifer Rivera, and Dr. Georgia Purdom. Answers News is our weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum, broadcast on our Answers in Genesis YouTube channel, and posted to Answers TV. We also covered the following topics:

  • New drone design copies God’s handiwork.
  • Is science a “belief system” or a tool?
  • Could Gen Z be the “revival generation”?
  • And more!

Watch the entire episode of Answers News for February 26, 2025.

Be sure to join us each Wednesday at 2 p.m. (ET) on YouTube or later that day on Answers TV for Answers News. You won’t want to miss this unique news program that gives science and culture news from a distinctly biblical and Christian perspective.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.

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