Bufferzone plan in our country is welcomed

IWAS happy to read Kirsty Feerick’s article on Tuesday about consultant Greg Irwin, below, from the QEUH in Glasgow. In the aftermath of Roe V Wade and the rise in clinic harassment in Glasgow, it’s heartening to see a doctor so committed to his patients.

The First Minister’s support for buffer zones is also encouraging but it remains very disappointing that she takes no real action against culprits within her own party.

SNP MSP John Mason has admitted to attending a hospital protest and played down the distress that these cause vulnerable patients.

In screenshots widely circulated on Twitter, Mason has also allegedly replied to constituents that he is pleased about the Roe V Wade ruling and made thinlyveiled threats to women’s rights with rhetoric like ‘Even if abortion is allowed to be continued in Scotland’. Mason went further and claimed that abortion patients end up on a ‘conveyer belt’ and are not given full information from NHS staff. While these unfounded claims have been condemned by senior members of the SNP, these are frightening and uncertain times for women in Scotland.

We urgently need hospital buffer zones, decriminalisation of abortion and, in my view, for John Mason to have the party whip withdrawn. Gemma Clark Johnstone

THREE cheers for John Mason MSP who has a conscience (‘MSP under fire for abortion comments’, June 27). Abortion claims the lives of the most innocent and vulnerable humans. Just look up the NHS website’s ultrasound picture of the unborn at around three months.

Scotland used to be known as ‘The Land of the Book’ but having an abortion limit of 24 weeks (six months) is a mark of barbarity.

J T Hardy

Via email

IN your readers’ letters on Monday, Tim Cox came across as being both arrogant and out of touch with the facts in his letter regarding the European Union.

I voted to leave the EU, so according to him, I am “in the most ignorant of voters” category.

He says he left the Conservative

Party, having been an activist for many years, because of its betrayal of the European project of peace, etc.

I must correct him on that point. It is the presence of non-EU member states in NATO who have been involved in ‘Project Peace’ for Europe since the end of the Second World War, that the EU relies on.

Like many thousands of my generation, I did compulsory National Service in Europe.

Without the ultimate sacrifice made by many citizens of non-EU countries during two world wars, there would be a different EU from the one existing today.

Name and address supplied