A London council is set to become the first UK local council to install a buffer zone outside a local abortion clinic, that will effectively ban any pro-life witness of any kind. Regan King comments.
Ealing Council has voted in favour of a consultation on whether to introduce a public space protection order (PSPO) that would ban pro-life presence of any kind from outside Marie Stopes on Mattock Lane. Rupa Huq, the MP for Ealing Central has expressed her desire that such a zone would:
“exclude protests within 150 metres and no less must be drawn…This would include silent praying, singing hymns, displaying foetus images and leaflet distribution”
Up to this point, the Good Counsel Network, a group which organises prayer vigils and providing pavement counselling of pregnant women in crisis, has been shown no respect or adequate consideration in proceedings that have routinely and deliberately sought to tarnish their good work with unproven, slanderous accusations. The group has repeatedly offered all involved in the investigation the opportunity to meet and hear from women who have been helped by the Network’s pavement counsellors to keep their children; the offer has been consistently ignored.
Hiding behind a façade of caring for women, the head of Ealing Council, Julian Bell said:
"Ealing Council is committed to ending the intimidation and harassment faced by those seeking legally available medical support."
Of note, however is that it took 20 years of the Good Counsel Network’s activity outside the Ealing clinic for Ealing Council to consider them a threat to society. Has the Good Counsel Network shifted in their tactics and adopted a policy of aggression in recent days? Hardly.
Video footage said to be of ‘intimidating’ protestors blocking the way to the abortion clinic simply shows around 3 people engaged in prayer on some grass opposite the clinic’s entrance. When a woman about to enter the clinic approaches the standard procedure is to address her calmly and compassionately, offering her the choice Marie Stopes will not give – to keep the baby.
3,000 mothers are known to have been directly helped to keep their babies by the Good Counsel Network alone. More than 13,000 are believed to have been helped by the similar pro-life vigil group, 40 Days For Life. In 2016 there were 608 fewer abortions in England and Wales than in 2015. When we narrow the scope to Marie Stopes on Mattock Lane in Ealing – outside of which The Good Counsel Network holds many of its vigils – and take both NHS and private abortions into consideration there were some 7,459 abortions performed in the clinic in 2015 and 6,484 performed in 2016. That’s a drop of 975.
The Good Counsel Network has inarguably saved lives of many children and bettered the lives of their mothers. With abortion rates dropping, BPAS and Marie Stopes are running scared and trying desperately to avoid the collapse of the entire pro-abortion/anti-life industry.
Though pro-abortionists may win some battles – possibly even succeeding in installing buffer zones – they will lose the war. The beauty of life will overpower the darkness of death and the light of those the small, seemingly weak-numbered, and very unintimidating protestors will pierce and shatter the darkness of this nation’s abortion death cult.