On 11 May 2022, 2 men showed up at Glasgow’s Sandyford clinic. They had a microphone, body cameras and “abortion is murder” signs. They were confrontational.

According to the pickle_bee twitter account they came back on 25 May and 7 June.

Who were the ‘Sandyford 2’

The pro-life community didn’t know them. Or want to. And abortion supporters agreed that they were different too. Rachael Clarke, Chief of Staff at the abortion provider BPAS correctly noted:

Pickle_bee agreed that this wasn’t “like the silent vigil like we mostly see:”

Turns out the “Sandyford protestors” are Angus Cameron, a pastor at the Cumnock Baptist Church. And Ross Duncan from the Partick Free Church. They’re regular street preachers in Glasgow city centre.

Why were they at Sandyford?

No one knows. It’s been suggested that they went to Sandyford because genuine pro-life vigils don’t go there. Participants in genuine Glasgow vigils condemn this approach and want nothing to do with them. If they’d showed up at a real Glasgow vigil they’d have been told to ‘jog on’ or similar words.

Did they do any harm?

Yes. Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board logged seven incidents over three days in their DATIX incident management system. This seems to match pickle_bee’s reports, above. According to the NHS Freedom on Information response 18063 dated 2nd August, the outcome was ‘disruption to services’

What does this tell us?

Perhaps some people will do anything for attention? More importantly, this episode shows that NHS Boards can, and do, log incidents which affect patients or services. The small number of Sandyford incidents should be put in context of the many years of NHS data stating that no disruption has been caused by vigils near abortion clinics or hospitals

What happened in the end?

Abortion supporters went to our street preachers usual pitch in central Glasgow and danced the Macarena over their ‘end of the world is nigh’ preaching. A humourous and common sense response!