When is a protest not a protest?

If those outside health settings like the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and the Sandyford Clinic are to be believed, it is supposedly a vigil.

It is, however, a protest.

If you are against something, and your presence is intended to prevent people from doing the thing you are against, that is a protest.

READ MORE: Glasgow 'ready to pioneer' laws to curb anti-abortion protests outside hospitals

In this case it is more than a protest. It is intimidation. It could be seen as harassment.

Preventing, or attempting to prevent, people accessing healthcare they are legally entitled to must be wrong and there has to be a way to move them on.

Whether it is anti-social behaviour laws or anti-harassment laws. If they are not robust enough then new laws need to be written.

We have all seen countless examples of people protesting lawfully and peacefully who are then dragged away by police, yet this allowed to go unchecked.

There are other ways of influencing the law, like targeting law makers.

READ MORE: John Mason SNP MSP accused of 'spreading misinformation' over abortion services

John Mason, Shettleston SNP MSP, said he would hardly call it a protest, just a few people praying. As if by praying means it can’t be a protest.

If they think their prayers are going to be answered, does it matter where they do the praying?

Do they think their prayers are more likely to be answered if they are offered outside a hospital than from the privacy of their own home or from inside their church?

When they are praying for victims of earthquakes, do they need be close to the quake zone?

When they are praying for those suffering famine do their prayers lose impact if they are offered thousands of miles away on another continent?

READ MORE: Catholic Bishops issue statement on abortion as Nicola Sturgeon chairs buffer zone summit

If not, then why do their prayers over abortion need to be delivered within sight and sound of women going through, or considering, the process.

Viewed from this perspective, the reason they are praying outside hospitals and clinics which offer abortion care appears to be to intimidate the women who are accessing the care.

The men who have been targeting the Sandyford in Sauchiehall Street have placards accusing those inside of committing murder.

Should that be allowed?

They backed up their claims with quotes from the bible.

The days of religious fanatics making our laws or influencing our lawmakers should be long behind us.

Sadly, they appear to have made a comeback, emboldened by events in the USA with overturning of the Roe v Wade judgement after almost half a century.

Just when the country though it had righted the wrong of electing Donald Trump, his three appointments to the Supreme Court in his one-term presidency are going to ensure a lasting legacy.

Trump’s views towards women were clear before he was elected, and they were not healthy.

It seems the protests here in Glasgow, and Scotland, are not going to continue unchallenged.

Counter-protesters have already moved the men on from the Sandyford at least once and legal steps are finally being taken to cover them all.

Glasgow City Council has said it is willing to “pioneer” a pilot of buffer zones outside facilities to move these people 150 metres away.

The sooner the better. Why not make it 500 metres and only permissible on one day a month, preferably when it is closed.

The protesters, no matter how pious and peaceful they claim to be, are intimidating.

They know they are intimidating because that is why they are there in the first place.

It is intimidation cloaked in religious observance.

The public comments of some people, MSP Mason again, over this are also designed to portray a picture of women addressing these services as selfish and the service itself of being uncaring, cold and clinical.

The idea that that a woman struggling with the decision whether to have a termination is going to be better supported by someone outside a clinic with a bible in their hand than the trained professionals inside is absurd and insulting.

The idea that they have turned up for an appointment without going over the alternatives already is equally absurd.

To those outside the hospitals and clinics, your religion is your choice and here you are free to practise it.

The women you are intimidating have the right to healthcare, which includes termination of pregnancy where appropriate, and should be free to access it.

Leave them in peace to do so.

Stay at home, pray at home and leave the women and the staff alone.