SNP de-platforms pro-life group

The SNP has come under fire for cancelling a pro-life group from its party conference over claims it would make members ‘uncomfortable’.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) had already booked the fringe event, ‘No Law to Protect Her: The Reality of Coerced Abortion’, where a panel of women were set to discuss the lack of a “criminal offence for men who coerce women into having abortions”.

But after activists accused SPUC of presenting a “progressive veil for their outdated and bigoted beliefs”, the SNP cancelled the event and claimed that it had been “wrong” to ever allow it.

‘Preventing debate’

Michael Robinson, Executive Director of SPUC, stated: “Preventing debate and discussion and cancelling valid viewpoints are behaviours associated with totalitarian regimes around the world, the rule of the mob has replaced the rule of law within the SNP.”

He explained: “Our fringe event was on the subject of coerced abortion as we believe that no woman in Scotland should be coerced or pressured into having an abortion.

“The First Minister must now categorically state his views on this important issue: does he agree with SPUC that Scottish women should be legally protected from coerced abortion, if so why has he allowed a panel of expert women to be cancelled from his conference? Or is it the position of the SNP that women should not have specific coerced abortion legal protections?”

The pro-life group is considering legal action.

Almost 20,000 abortions

Last year, Scotland’s total number of abortions rose to yet another high. Public Health Scotland’s annual report showed that there were 18,783 abortions in 2025, breaking the previous year’s record of 18,717.

In almost 60 per cent of cases, a woman took both pills during an unsupervised DIY abortion at home, and overall, more than 40 per cent had previously aborted an unborn child.