Americans go to the polls this week to decide how they think their futures should look. A woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy is firmly on the ballot paper – with the candidate running to be the first female US president having built a major part of her campaign around it.
It is also the first national election since America’s top court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling in 2022. Abortion, and by extension women’s bodies, have been on the US political agenda ever since women had the temerity to demand a vote in the 20th century, and modern medicine was developed with reproductive healthcare in mind.
It is a stark difference to how the UK operates and where public sentiment seems to be on this side of the pond. Which is why it seems particularly poignant timing that something that had seemed so distinctly un-British to many, and like a direct American import, has quietly been challenged by the law.
As of last Thursday, a new law was introduced meaning it will be illegal to influence, harass or provoke anyone using or administering pregnancy termination services within a 150-metre radius of an abortion clinic. Those who breach this will face unlimited fines.
Abortion buffer zones have already come into action in Northern Ireland and Scotland. But somehow, women and men standing outside abortion clinics in England and Wales – sometimes with signs featuring very graphic images – became an expected part of what a woman sees when arriving for an appointment at an abortion clinic.
These people, who all carry the same leaflets, are often organised by Catholic charities. The new law is intended to remove any extra stress, shame or harassment that women can face going in for what already can be a difficult procedure. And to protect those who work in these healthcare clinics. Those against the change express concerns about freedom of speech.
Just before the law came in, I headed down to a clinic in southeast London to speak to those protesting and praying outside, and to those providing healthcare to women on the inside. Armed only with curiosity and a mic, a series of powerful, passionate and heated interviews for the Today programme ensued.
My brilliant producer Anna Budd and I were deeply struck, standing on either side of the white clinic door, by how it felt to be physically on a major faultline.
Admittedly, in Britain, abortion is not the political topic it is elsewhere, not least in America. But the numbers of abortions are going up, which some put down to the cost of living. In 2022, there were 251,377 abortions for women residing in England and Wales – the highest number since the Abortion Act was introduced in 1967.
Opinion polls in this country also show support has only grown for a woman’s right to access an abortion. The National Centre for Social Research’s most recent social attitudes study shows support for abortion has increased, although there is slightly less support when there is no health risk involved. Support for an abortion being allowed in circumstances when the woman decides on her own that she does not want to have a child has consistently risen year on year, from 37 per cent in 1983 to 76 per cent now.
And yet the organisation of these protests and the regularity of their presence has become a growing – and for some, a worrying – norm in modern day Britain.
It is also very organised beyond the leaflets. For instance, I was directed by the four people (three women and one man) mouthing prayers across the road from the clinic, while holding rosary beads and leaflets and standing next to an easel with a framed picture of the Virgin Mary and some signs about God, to go to speak to the men flanking the wrought iron gates to the clinic. They didn’t want to interrupt their fervent prayer. Fair enough. So that’s we did.
Richard, standing on one side, explained there were no circumstances under which abortion was permitted, including rape. He also couldn’t process the idea of how some women would be intimidated by two men standing on the door of a healthcare clinic, making the case their choice is deeply immoral, unkind, and even un-Christian.
I then went inside and spoke to Ailish McEntee, the midwife in charge of safeguarding adults and children at MSI Reproductive Choices, one of the UK’s largest abortion providers. She welcomes the buffer zones, explaining she has had to calm some women down who have been spoken to or accosted by protesters on their way in for an appointment.
“Women have had people screaming ‘murderer’ or shouting out ‘mummy’ and saying that they’re going to be praying for them – that is a really harrowing experience,” she tells me.
That is not how Richard says he conducts himself. But he cannot speak for all protestors.
Richard and Ailish – despite being only metres apart physically – couldn’t be further apart in their views and perceptions of the same issue. Now by law, they will have to be at least 150 metres apart.
The protestors I met this week haven’t decided what their next step will be in response to the law change. A new norm has yet to materialise in their campaign to try and stop women from having abortions.
But being that close to two vehemently disagreeing parties was quite something, as a needle quietly shifts again.
As I drive past on the morning of the law change, for the first time in my memory of living close to this clinic in southeast London, there are no protestors anywhere to be seen.
But as Americans go to the polls, we await to see what legal changes potentially await one of our most important political allies, how women will be affected and what ripples may be felt across the pond.
This week I have been…
Watching Paddington 2
It’s half term and we are awaiting the next Paddington instalment: Paddington in Peru. In order to be fully ready, we’ve gone for full marmalade immersion by also decamping to the gorgeous Paddington Experience in that former political address – London’s County Hall (a fact that always makes me chuckle as I wandered the halls seeing Shreks and Peruvian bears instead of local politicians). Quite simply it’s magical and took my breath away. Me, the adult. Beautifully scripted, acted and built – I wanted to stay the whole day and some.
Reading ‘Sissinghurst‘ by Vita Sackville West
A poem by the writer and famous gardener and custodian of this magical place, written to her lover Virginia Woolf. I only recently visited what was England’s most famous garden. To see it even in Autumn, and be so taken by its pioneering rooms, makes me eager to witness its full sunnier bloom. This stunning pamphlet produced by Sackville-West’s author granddaughter Juliet Nicholson is reminding this city dweller how big the sky really is and how small we all are. It begins: “A tired swimmer in the waves of time…” Quite.
Watching Giant at the Royal Court theatre
It’s sold out but you might get lucky. Get ready for a deeply uncomfortable evening – brilliantly executed by John Lithgow, Rachael Stirling, Elliot Levey and Romala Garai. What is antisemitism versus anti-Israel sentiment? It finishes with the uttering of Roald Dahl’s famous words about Hitler having a point when it came to killing the Jews. I was a wreck. As a major Dahl fan, who is Jewish and thought she knew of his Jew hatred, Mark Rosenblatt’s clever and unflinching script undid me. Rightly so. Bravo to all. But I do still fear it will be wilfully misunderstood by some, especially in the current climate.
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