Lawyers for a Scottish grandmother who was arrested for offering conversation in an abortion clinic buffer zone have welcomed a judge’s decision to throw out the charges, declaring it a “free speech victory”.

Rose Docherty, 75, was arrested last September for holding up a sign outside a Glasgow hospital that said “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want”. She was later charged with “influencing” within a “buffer zone”.

It was her second arrest for peacefully offering consensual conversation in a “buffer zone”, having been arrested the first time in February 2025. The Procurator Fiscal decided against prosecution in that instance.

She was the first person to be criminally charged under Scotland’s 2024 “buffer zone” law, which forbids the “influencing” of anyone seeking to access “abortion services” within 200 metres of every hospital in Scotland. Critics say it amounts to censorship.