Opinion
Featured Image
 Shutterstock.com

LONDON, October 29, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A report claiming that clients of British abortion clinics are upset by pro-life sidewalk counselors is one-sided, unscientific, and biased to promote the exclusion of pro-lifers from around abortion facilities, say pro-life leaders, while ignoring the hundreds of women the counselors persuade to have their babies.

The report is based on information from 206 questionnaires produced and distributed by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service – one of the country`s biggest abortion providers – over a four year-period. Its authors conclude by supporting BPAS's “Back Off” campaign to get the British Parliament to pass “bubble zone” laws pushing pro-life volunteer sidewalk counselors away and out of sight.

The report's authors, social science professors from Aston University, telegraph their punches from the outset with the report's title, “A Hard Enough Decision to Make,” based on a recurring theme among a small minority of those questioned who want the activists removed.

Dr. Pam Lowe, one of the report's authors, told the news media: “It's clear from the comments BPAS has received that some women find the decision to seek an abortion hard enough as it is, without the added stress of anti-abortion activists present outside clinics.”

The report found that while the conduct of  some pro-life activists was bothersome (especially if they were videotaping the proceedings), even their peaceful presence constituted a stressful invasion of privacy for some clients.

“The BPAS data persuasively reveals that the clinic users experience the presence of activists outside clinics as inherently threatening and distressing,” the report states.

But Clare McCullough, the director of the Good Counsel Network, which supports women with unwanted pregnancies with financial, emotional, and logistical care and maintains a year-round vigil at three London BPAS abortuaries, told LifeSiteNews: “Their distress is the evidence that many of them are aware that a life is being taken.”

Click “like” if you are PRO-LIFE!

McCullough added that even though the report counted 208 people claiming that pro-lifers caused them distress, only a quarter of these wanted the pro-lifers removed. Hardly a ringing endorsement of bubble zones.

She added that even the report's authors admit that “[t]here are many weaknesses in the report. First, the questionnaire method 'self-selects' those especially upset by the presence of pro-lifers outside, because those who aren't upset simply don't bother filling it out.”

Only 206 filled out questionnaires in a four-year period at 11 clinics, which many thousands visited. On the other hand, “I have a list of 196 women over the last two years who had a positive experience because of our presence,” she said. “They told us they didn't feel they had an alternative to abortion until they saw us and we offered to help.”

McCullough said she was interviewed about the Aston Report by the BBC, but when she offered to connect the reporter with some of these women, “[t]he BBC wasn't interested. This report, and the media coverage, is totally one-sided.”

The report itself admits that the questionnaire used leading questions. For example: “The BPAS form implicitly establishes the type of conduct adopted by activists outside the clinic as potentially unlawful.” As well, the questionnaire identifies the activists as protesters, which academics admit “is not neutral.” Admit the authors: “It is quite possible that the responses of clinic users may have been affected.”

As well, concede the academics, they don't really know who filled the questionnaires out. Was it people who accompanied the pregnant women into the clinic, some of whom are pro-abortion activists? Was it staff?

Many respondents, according to the report, showed they were “keenly aware” of the right to free speech while arguing that free speech should not be exercised outside abortion clinics.

Showing her own bias, Lowe said, “Our findings clearly illustrate the issue [of free speech versus privacy] needs revisiting to ensure a fair balance is struck between competing rights.”

Paul Tully, general secretary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the U.K.'s largest pro-life group, told LifeSiteNews, “The Aston study is very poor and does not conform to academic standards.” Tully noted that the authors admitted that the questionnaire contained biased questions; might have been filled out by anybody in the clinic, not just patients; and did not support the authors' own conclusion about the need for buffer or bubble zones. “Only a quarter of respondents or less said that it was inappropriate to have a so-called 'protest' near the entrance to an abortion center. Less than a quarter took the opportunity to say explicitly said that such a presence should not be allowed.”

As for relying on the abortion clinics to gather data, Tully said, “Abortion clinics lose an average of about £600 each time a woman chooses to keep her baby, so they are hardly an impartial source of data.”

Tully was also critical of the BBC, which covered the story in a highly biased way, in his view. “Despite being offered information about women who decided to have their babies, the BBC has refused to report their perspective.”