Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
The UK business secretary has denied that laws criminalising protests outside abortion clinics have affected US tariff negotiations.
Jonathan Reynolds was responding to a Telegraph report in which a source familiar with trade discussions claimed there would be “no free trade without free speech”.
On Sunday, an office of the US state department said a senior adviser recently met with an anti-abortion campaigner in the UK. Livia Tossici-Bolt, a 62-year-old retiree, will be sentenced on Friday for allegedly breaching a ‘buffer zone’ around a Bournemouth abortion clinic.
As of October 2024, it is an offence to intentionally influence or obstruct anyone accessing an abortion service in England or Wales.
However some local councils, including Bournemouth, were already enforcing protection orders outside clinics.
Tossici-Bolt is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a US pressure group whose lawyers helped overturn Roe v Wade.
