Women who felt abandoned, isolated and out of options have told of their relief at meeting people who showed them alternatives to abortion.
Their stories feature in a new campaign, Be Here For Me, which challenges attempts to ban pro-life supporters outside abortion centres.
Be Here For Me says these efforts – backed by abortion giant BPAS – would ban help when it is needed most.
Pressure
‘Sara’ explained how she felt under “strong pressure” to abort her 23-week-old baby after her partner left her.
But after seeing the scan of her unborn child “playing, and putting her thumb in her mouth” she left the centre and met a pro-life campaigner.
“My baby girl would not be here today if I had not met the woman outside the abortion clinic”, she says.
Choose life
‘Dee’ and ‘Robert’ told how they were planning an abortion but did not like the cold approach from the abortion centre staff. They met with pro-life advocates who gave them support to choose life.
‘Betty’ said she was “hopeless and helpless” when she found out she was pregnant.
She felt she had no choice but to have an abortion and booked an appointment through her GP at 11 weeks.
But she also changed her mind after campaigners provided her with support to have the child. “If somebody was not there to see me I could have gone through with the abortion”, she explained.
Pressure
Last month a judge rejected a bid to silence a pro-life campaign in Nottingham.
Judge Richard Owen QC said there was no evidence to support an injunction against the organiser of a 40 Days for Life vigil in the city.
Nottingham City Council, which brought the action, claimed people felt “intimidated and distressed” by the pro-life group, and said the judge had “missed the point”.
Dr John Edwards, who faced the injunction, said: “This is no longer just a debate about abortion: the fundamental right of citizens to express themselves peacefully in public is at risk.”
No evidence
In November the Government ordered an “in-depth assessment of protests outside abortion clinics” and could hand the police new powers to silence pro-life opposition.
Originally pro-lifers were to be excluded from the review, but the Home Office reversed its decision.
During a parliamentary hearing in December, abortion giant BPAS claimed that interactions between peaceful pro-life protestors and women seeking an abortion can have “really profoundly awful consequences”.