This month marks 90 years since the first Marie Stopes clinic opened. It's now the UK's largest abortion charity, with 70 centres across the country offering safe terminations for women. Yet, even in 2015, pro-life campaigners are still camping outside, and actually closed down a clinic this summer. Polly Dunbar investigates...
It's a sunny Thursday morning in Lewisham, South London, and outside St Johns Medical Centre, a protest is taking place. The participants are unfailingly polite as they engage passers-by in conversation and hand out leaflets. Yet their friendly smiles form a stark contrast to the massive photographs they hold: gruesome, bloody images of dismembered foetuses.
They’re from Abort67, a pro-life group who say they’re there to ‘educate the public’ about the abortion services offered by Marie Stopes inside the clinic. One proffers a tiny doll she says is an accurate representation of a 12-week-old foetus; she says it’s a ‘tool’ to show women the reality of the human life they’re about to end.
A few members of the public show support for their cause by holding their thumbs up. Others shout from inside passing cars: ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves.’ As I stand there, all I can think about is the vulnerability and distress I’d feel if I was visiting the clinic for an abortion and had to walk past all this.
Lucy Ward, 33, who had an abortion at a Marie Stopes centre in Leeds in February, had a similar experience. ‘When I saw the posters on my way in, I felt sick. I was shaking and crying by the time I got inside. I felt I was being subjected to some walk of shame – it felt medieval,’ she says.
This month, Marie Stopes UK celebrates the 90th anniversary of the opening of its central London clinic, the first to offer women access to sexual and reproductive healthcare. It started a revolution in women taking control of whether and when to have children, which began with contraception and later, from 1967, included access to safe, legal abortions.
By the age of 45, one in three British women will have had an abortion. Half are early medical abortions, in which women take pills to end the pregnancy, and half are surgical abortions. Four out of five are performed before 10 weeks. In England, Scotland and Wales, we are fortunate to have access to abortion services. Other countries cannot take them for granted. Even in Northern Ireland, abortion outside very limited medical conditions carries the harshest criminal penalty in Europe (as it does in the Republic of Ireland): life imprisonment for the woman and anyone helping her. In the US, right-wing Republicans are waging an ongoing war against abortion providers. For many American women, the nearest abortion clinic is in another state, meaning it is available only to those with enough money to travel.
Even in this country, however, many women seeking abortions have to run the gauntlet of protestors. Some, like Abort67, hold up graphic images and video cameras, which they insist are to film the protest for their own protection, but which can feel sinister to women using the services.
Others, such as the Catholic Good Counsel Network, whose 40 Days for Life campaign consists of 40-day prayer vigils outside clinics, hand out leaflets like the one I was given outside Marie Stopes’ Central London clinic, claiming – wrongly – that abortions are linked to infertility and breast cancer. Sexual health providers believe these protestors make it more difficult for women to access the advice and care they are legally entitled to, and perpetuate the stigma around abortions.
‘The women who come to our clinics are in an awful situation,’ says Fiona Baines, clinical operations manager at Marie Stopes. ‘They’re vulnerable and often feel upset, and these groups make them feel worse. They’re not outside Parliament trying to change the law; they’re outside clinics using scare tactics and emotional blackmail to shame women. We work very hard in our clinics to make women feel comfortable and empowered by their choice, so what they do is very frustrating.’
Abort67 say they aim to ‘make abortion unthinkable’ with their protests. Their spokeswoman, Ruth Rawlins, says, ‘We don’t harass anybody, we just talk to people and inform them about the reality of abortion. No one is pressed to engage with us and no one is obstructed from entering the clinic. We agree the images we show are disgusting, but that’s only because the practice they’re depicting is disgusting.’ When I point out that access to safe, legal abortions is a health issue – around the world 22 million women undergo unsafe abortion each year, and 47,000 die from complications – she says, ‘Should we legalise other crimes, like robbery, so we can regulate those better, too?’
This may be bizarre logic, but she is entitled to her beliefs. What, though, entitles her to impose her views on others? ‘We’re not here to make women feel bad, but to try to save lives,’ she insists. ‘Some women we talk to do change their minds.’
However, a recent survey in the US howed that 95 per cent of women do not regret having an abortion. And although groups like Abort67 claim to offer support to women if they do decide to continue with their pregnancy, they offer no financial help or practical solutions to the problems posed by an unwanted baby.
In Belfast, where abortion is legal only in exceptional circumstances, the atmosphere outside Marie Stopes is often fraught with tension and even fear. Emma Campbell, 35, is a volunteer escort who accompanies women past protestors and into the clinic.
‘Abortion carries a massive stigma here, so the protests are a form of public shaming,’ she says. ‘There’s always a ring of protestors around the clinic. They come very close to the women so they can harass them as they walk. Sometimes, they throw holy water and say things like, “We’ve christened your child Bernadette.” It’s extremely traumatic for women.’
It’s tempting to assume anti-abortion protests could never be so aggressive here in socially liberal Britain, yet according to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), an undisclosed clinic was forced to close this summer because of ‘intimidating protestors’. Campaigners say the health service is being ‘held hostage’ by the protestors, and they are now calling for buffer zones that would mean anti-abortion groups have to stay at least 10 metres away from the entrance of a clinic.
For women like Lucy, this would be a welcome sign of support. ‘It would show that intimidating women and making them feel ashamed for something they have a right to do is unacceptable.’
For further information about Marie Stopes' anniversary and services go to mariestopes.org.uk/90-years-of-choice