Minister for Health Simon Harris 
A prominent pro-life group has accused Health Minister Simon Harris of repeatedly raising the issue of creating exclusion zones outside abortion clinics for no other reason than to depict pro-life people in a poor light and to take the focus off the extreme abortion law that received Government approval yesterday.
Commenting on the Minister’s repeated references to buffer zones of late, Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro Life Campaign said:
“Anyone not familiar with the extreme nature of the Government’s planned abortion legislation could be forgiven for thinking Minister Harris was merely introducing legislation for ‘buffer zones’ outside abortion clinics given the ridiculously disproportionate attention he has given to this particular issue.
“Of course, it suits Simon Harris to deflect away from the true horror of his new abortion law. Depicting pro-lifers in as poor a light as possible and harping on about things like the need for buffer zones to stop anti-abortion protests certainly creates a very different image from having to explain to the public what will be happening behind closed doors in the rooms where totally innocent and defenceless unborn babies are having their lives ended.
“There’s nothing new about Simon Harris’s public relations strategy. It is directly and faithfully taken from the international pro-abortion playbook, where abortion at all costs must be sanitised and its opponents demonised.”
Dr Cullen added that voters are learning the Government’s plan all along was for the provision of wide-ranging abortion and not just limited abortion, noting that when pro-life people said there would be taxpayer funded abortions, they were accused of “scaremongering”.
