BOURNEMOTUH, England (LifeSiteNews) — An abortion clinic in Bournemouth, England, is the latest to get a so-called “buffer zone” – a “no free-speech” bubble created to prevent pro-life activists from offering women arriving to procure abortions other alternatives.
The justification, of course, is that pro-lifers are “harassing” both women and the abortion clinic staff. The zone will be a large one, encompassing six streets for twelve hours a day during business days, and will be in effect for at least the next three years.
Examples of “harassment” cited as reasons the zone was necessary include women being told that their “baby loves them,” pro-lifers holding plastic fetal models and offering pamphlets, referring to the women as “mummy,” and offering baby clothes. Any person doing any of those things will now be subject to a £100 fine and charges at a magistrates’ court.
But the prohibition covers a lot more than that. The newly erected signs, which denote the alleged “Safe Zone” in which the British Pregnancy Advisory Service can kill babies without anyone there to speak for them, feature a list of forbidden activities including:
- Holding vigils
- Praying
- Reciting Scripture
- Crossing yourself if you “perceive a service-user is passing by”
- Counseling
Additionally, no “text or images relating directly or indirectly to the termination of pregnancy and or playing amplified music, voice, or audio recordings” are permitted.
Bournemouth 2022. It is now. illegal to cross yourself. Stop for a moment and think about the implications…. pic.twitter.com/4gqnaXGpha
— Gavin Ashenden (@gavinashenden) October 16, 2022
Outreach outside abortion clinics is a difficult task – pro-lifers refer to it as “eleventh hour ministry” due to the fact that this is usually the last opportunity pro-lifers have to reach out to abortion-minded women. Abortion clinic staff, for obvious reasons, hate the fact that pro-lifers sometimes manage to persuade their customers to change course; former abortion clinic staffers have stated that the presence of pro-lifers who are doing nothing but praying often causes immense stress. 40 Days for Life leaders have noted that this is a very spiritual battle.
Despite how difficult clinic outreach is – watching sometimes visibly pregnant women walk in to drop off their children is a gut-wrenching experience – I’ve seen many babies saved this way (one particularly wonderful day saw three women change their minds and accept a ride to the crisis pregnancy centre instead). It is a loss to the pro-life movement, a loss to the women who might finally be granted a real choice (data indicates that many women feel trapped into making the decision, although certainly not all), and above all the babies who have no one to speak for them as they are carried into the clinic to be suctioned into bloody slurry or dismembered with metal forceps.
Sometimes, one merely has to look at what a law demands to know that it is wicked. No praying. No reciting the Bible. No offering of help of any kind. These are laws passed by a post-Christian culture to great a silo of silence where babies can be murdered softly, a sacrifice on the altar of the sexual revolution that has so utterly transformed our culture over the past sixty years.
These pre-born children, as Dr. Monica Miller has pointed out, not only have the right to life, but the right to our defense. And an unjust law, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, is no law at all.
