Senior Scottish National party MPs, MSPs and councillors have expressed concerns about proposed changes to gender recognition laws as they launched a pledge calling for women to have the right to discuss such policies.

Several women at the launch for the SNP women’s pledge said they were close to quitting the party because of what they considered to be a refusal by officials to address concerns that women and girls could fall victim to predatory men or lose access to single-sex services.

Speaking on the panel, the anti-Brexit campaigner Joanna Cherry said she had faced significant abuse online for raising concerns. While she said this came from “a small minority of people”, she said the controversy raised broader questions about how the party did business.

“There are serious questions about how we develop policy in the SNP and how we conduct debate,” she said. “It’s important to disagree – we could do with more disagreement at times – but it has to be respectful.”

Cherry said she saw no conflict between signing the SNP’s official Out for Indy pledge, which supports transgender rights, and the women’s pledge.

At the private meeting, which took place on Sunday night in the city centre of Aberdeen, where the SNP conference is taking place, some attendees spoke about being labelled transphobes for raising concerns, to the extent that they felt “pushed underground”. Read more via Guardian