40 Days for Life: Prayers and protests

Campaigners are harassing women and holding long Lenten prayer vigils outside abortion clinics. Holly Baxter reports on the impact of this growing trend
In the name of God … a 40 Days for Life campaigner in London

Outside the British Pregnancy Advisory Service in central London, a young man tells me that he's won his first "save" of the day. "She was 12 years old," he says excitedly, "and she didn't even know who the father was.
 
Dead set on abortion. Now she's gone inside for an ultrasound, but she's agreed to come along with me afterwards. We have a clinic where she can get the loving help she needs to carry her baby full-term."

For Joseph, a fresh-faced man in his early 30s who claims that he has been an enthusiastic member of anti-abortion group 40 Days For Life "from birth", this is another small victory in the name of God. He explains that a "save" is when intervention from a group member results in a pregnant woman leaving an abortion clinic untreated. "Day 41," states the front page of the US-based 40 Days website, "554 babies saved!"

40 Days for Life is a religious anti-abortion campaign that sets up camp outside reproductive health clinics during Lent (which ends Easter Sunday), and attempts to prevent women from having terminations or accessing "baby-killing propaganda". Much has been made of their harassment techniques that range from the insidious (bursting into hymn as tearful women emerge from the clinics, giving out plastic rosary beads in powder pink or baby blue at the door) to the mendacious (leaflets disguised as NHS literature that address the reader as "Mum" and speak of "not being able to look your future children in the eye").

Abigail Fitzgibbon, public policy manager for BPAS, says that clinic employees attempt to minimise distress to clients as best they can, but ultimately remain powerless. I witness the effects myself during four weeks observing the protesters: a teenager waiting for his girlfriend who absentmindedly takes a leaflet and leaves upset; a couple who hide in a bush for an hour, waiting in vain for the "prayer vigil" to leave; a middle-aged mother-of-three, navigating a pushchair, is heckled with: "You have kids already! What are you doing?"

Joseph, who grew up in a home where his parents would regularly bring home pregnant teenage girls to "rescue", speaks of "converting" the employees as well as the patients. "God loves everybody", he reminds me, "even those who commit genocide." Inside the building that Joseph pickets in Bloomsbury, a BPAS employee tells me that she sees the protesters set up their "prayer vigils" every day. "We respect their right to peaceful protest," she says, wearily, "but anyone can see that this is all about intimidation. They know our short hours of operation but stay here until 8pm, often with babies in tow. Last year, a particularly threatening man took photos of our clients at the door and when we spoke to 40 Days, they claimed he was nothing to do with them. Perhaps he really was an isolated criminal, but if you create that menacing atmosphere, you have to take responsibility for the type of person that will naturally attract. Recently, one lone man watched me make my way home in the dark every night."

The pronouncements of certain Conservative MPs – Nadine Dorries claiming that a spot on reality TV would help her to "spread awareness" about time limits, health secretary Jeremy Hunt's support for a 12-week limit – has ensured that abortion in the UK has returned to the spotlight. There have been debates in parliament and a slew of newspaper opinion pieces. In response, BPAS has rolled out its first ever advocacy campaign in support of a woman's right to choose. Billboards across the country say: "What do you call a woman who's had an abortion? Mother. Daughter. Sister. Friend."

Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that the 40 Days for Life protests in the UK – especially in London and Birmingham – have become larger and more vocal in the past two years. But they're still far smaller than groups in the US, with individual members often kneeling on freezing pavements for hours to hold the 12-hour presence demanded by the group HQ that's located "somewhere in Texas".

"Twelve hours is as long as we can do now practically, but we did one 24-hour vigil this year, which went well," UK director Robert Colquhoun tells me. "Since 2010, we've grown from one vigil in London to 10 across the country, and now we do 500 hours in total every Lent. Between 2011 and 2013, we've seen numbers increase exponentially – 2013 has been our most successful year."

A Marie Stopes spokesperson says that their main concern is targeting the "misleading information ... given to [women] by protesters". Flicking through a 40 Days leaflet, it's clear that this is a problem. Saturated in emotive language about "your tiny baby", its pseudo-medical statements imply that abortions often cause "serious physical complications" – a tactic that has earned them the moniker 40 Days for Lies among counter-protesters.

And yet, on a personal level, the people behind the placards are not the monsters you might think.Seeking to understand why the protesters would do this, I find them friendly at least, even when I say I'm a journalist. Almost all those I talk to are immigrants from largely Catholic countries, such as Poland, whose churches have suggested they attend "for the community". The younger ones are surprisingly lacking in evangelical zeal; they lounge on camping chairs, share hot chocolates, refer to the vigil as a "social gathering with friends", as they make up the numbers and say they don't agree with all the content in "these leaflets from America".

"The biggest enemy we face is indifference," Colquhoun had told me, and these words ring in my ears as I observe the next generation of anti-abortion campaigners, making jokes around boxes of plastic model foetuses. It's difficult not to imagine that the group has an expiry date. Will they fade away with the social effects of a recession, or really go from strength to strength, as Colquhoun imagines? It hardly matters for those individuals who were turned around at the gates by 40 Days for Life, of course. For them, the effects of their presence will be lifelong.