More vigil than protest

Tom Quinn reports from West London

Latin Mass Society members will have no doubt seen recent reports that perfectly lawful protests outside an abortion clinic in West London are to be banned.

Of course the local authority in question – Ealing and Acton Council – has insisted that the ban will not stop the protests but merely move them further away from the clinic itself.

The council’s motive, according to media reports, is ‘to stop the intimidation of women entering and leaving the clinic.’ The idea is a curious one given that anyone and everyone who has visited this part of Ealing will have seen that the protesters are invariably quiet and dignified.

As one journalist remarked, ‘no one in their right mind could possibly describe this as an intimidating protest.’ The journalist in question is highly experienced and has covered hundreds of marches and protests, some very intimidating indeed, in the UK and around the world.

Protest is in many ways the wrong word to describe the activities of those who are being moved away from the Ealing clinic. Their protest is in fact a vigil; they are there to remind the materialistic world of the rights of unborn children, who are so often described by the mainstream media as if they were inanimate objects and not unborn children at all: the cruel and illogical argument is that aborted foetuses were never unborn children – a patent absurdity.

The Ealing issue highlights the difficulty of persuading an increasingly materialist and secular society that abortion is a word that turns a profound moral and religious issue into an argument about convenience; adult humans with immortal souls do not have the right to destroy other human souls, either on the grounds of convenience or indeed or any other grounds.

Perhaps the clearest indication that those who promote abortion know that it is wrong can be judged by their attempts – unfortunately accepted by many - to medicalise a procedure that is not really about medicine at all.

With all this in mind the decision by Ealing and Acton Council seems to fly in the face both of the democratic right of protest and the right to hold and to express one’s religious convictions.

Those keeping the Ealing vigil have been doing so for more than twenty years and their offence seems to be nothing more than talking gently to those who wish to listen and handing out leaflets that offer women an alternative way forward.

And it is not even as if the arguments against abortion are all religious and moral ones. Reminding women in as gentle a fashion as possible that they may feel regret for the rest of their lives if they make the wrong decision can hardly be described as ‘intimidating’ or ‘unreasonable’.

Research has shown that some level of regret – and it is often profound - is an almost universal consequence of abortion. Countless studies have revealed that women who considered an abortion, and then decided against it, always report their relief and joy that they managed to escape from a terrible mistake that would almost certainly have blighted their lives.

Some of these women have gone on to become profound opponents of abortion. They have occasionally even joined that quiet vigil in Ealing.