”First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” so the saying goes. I am sure the Good Counsel Network is aware of this dynamic, which is ongoing in its apostolate outside the Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing, west London, where for years they have conducted a peaceful prayer vigil and had a pavement counsellor in place.
A couple of people on the opposite side of the road from the clinic pray quietly. The pavement counsellor alone respectfully and calmly approaches a woman entering the clinic and hands her a leaflet detailing Good Counsel’s offer of housing, financial and moral support to a mother about to abort because she is overwhelmed by the practical difficulties of keeping her baby.
Over 20-odd years Good Counsel have saved hundreds of lives. They currently house some 40 women who changed their minds and decided to keep their children. For so doing the Good Counsel has now been made the object of a Public Space Protection Order to prevent them assembling outside the clinic in Ealing. Marie Stopes’s website demands that this now become national policy and that no women should be “harassed” as they go into their clinics.
Inspired by the local MP, Rupa Huq, the passing of this measure – a power to exclude the right of being in a public space of those proven likely to commit anti-social or criminal behaviour – relies on an inaccurate portrayal of what was actually taking place. It is an abuse of the law, and in order to suppress the right of peaceful assembly the truth has been twisted beyond recognition. The MP has characterised the rosaries of a couple of people praying quietly as “weapons”. The behaviour of the counsellors was misrepresented as intended to intimidate and implicitly threaten staff and clients entering the clinic.
As anyone who has ever joined such a vigil or attended a March for Life knows, the intimidation is entirely from the other side. So intimidating is it, apparently, to find people outside an abortuary that the pro-abortion Sister Support had 50 of their members stand outside to provide support for the single option allowed by the “pro-choice” lobby.
Over the weekend I watched Clare McCullough of the Good Counsel Network face hostile media interviews. She deserves a Benemerenti for the way she put her case, asking that evidence from CCTV trained on the entrance to the clinic be provided, or indeed any other evidence of intimidation No evidence is forthcoming. She invited the journalists to interview some of the women Good Counsel have helped – none was aired – to provide a balanced assessment as to how “damaging” the Network’s presence was.
Abortion is not the only serious issue at stake here. An intolerant liberalism which wants the law to silence opposition to its shibboleths is gaining ground. It is not enough that 50 years and eight million deaths ago the “right” to abortion was legalised. Now your right to disagree with abortion is anti-social and criminal – even without evidence that you have broken any law.
In an age busy toppling statues and expunging people from history for their unconscionable ideologies, perhaps it’s time to turn the spotlight on the doyennes of the family planning movement. No one on the Left appears to have a problem with Margaret Sanger’s repugnant views on black people or notice that the clinics she founded continue to abort more African-American babies than from any other population. Her counterpart in England, Marie Stopes, advocated family planning and compulsory sterilisation because she was concerned with protecting racial purity. She disinherited her own son for marrying someone with defective eyesight.
Amid such darkness we should be thanking God for the witness of Clare and her wonderful organisation, and others like them. Their funding comes from voluntary donations. Their work and their vigils always need volunteers and prayerful support. If you have a parish or diocesan justice and peace committee, make sure it is aware of the Good Counsel Network and that it throws its weight behind its work, for the Network is on the front line in a battle for justice and peace, literally trying to save lives every day.
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