My Baby ‘Would Not Be Alive Today’: UK Mother Speaks Against Call for Buffer Zones Around Abortion Facilities

LONDON — During a recent debate at London’s Westminster Hall surrounding a proposal to enact “public space protection orders,” or buffer zones, around area abortion facilities, one lawmaker read a statement from a mother who said that her child “would not be alive today” if pro-lifers were not allowed to reach women as they enter and exit the facility.

The woman, who is only identified as Kate for fear of retaliation, did not want to have an abortion, but as she was under pressure to do so, she scheduled an appointment at a Marie Stopes facility in Ealing. While entering the facility surrounded by those who had encouraged the abortion, she was approached by a pro-life woman who offered her help.

Kate’s story was read aloud by Parliament member Edward Leigh.

“On the way into the clinic at the Marie Stopes clinic at Ealing, I was offered a leaflet by a woman who I spoke to briefly. She just told me she was there if I needed her,” Kate recalled. “I then went into the clinic, still not happy about being there for an abortion, but under immense pressure from a group of people that were with me to go through with it.”

Not wanting to go through with the abortion, while those who accompanied her were distracted, she literally jumped out the window to escape. Kate again saw the woman at the gate offering help to women arriving for an abortion.

“I didn’t find any aggression from the people offering support outside the Ealing clinic at all,” she recalled. “They did have leaflets documenting the development of a baby, a fetus, in the early stages.”

Kate said that she does not agree with the concept of placing buffer zones around abortion facilities because it could prevent women like herself from obtaining help.

“The potential introduction of buffer zones is a really bad idea because women like me, what would they do then?” she asked. “You know, not every woman that walks into those clinics actually wants to go through with the termination. There’s immense pressure, maybe they don’t have financial means to support themselves or their baby, or they feel like there’s no alternatives. These people offer alternatives.”

Kate, who very much loves the daughter that she could not bring herself to kill, said that her child might not be here today if a buffer zone had been enacted at that time.

“I had my baby who is now three and a half years old. She’s an amazing, perfect little girl and the love of my life,” she stated. “I want MPs here today calling to introduce buffer zones to realize that she would not be alive today if they had their way.”

The buffer zone concept had been proposed by Labor Party Parliament member Rupa Huq, who said during the debate that the pro-lifers “can take their protest elsewhere.”

She claimed that the information being presented by pro-lifers is “bogus science,” stating that she had been told so by two medics.

“The mistruths include the description of how developed the fetus is at 24 weeks [six months]—it is shown as having fingernails and things when that is just not the case,” Huq asserted.

“Whatever happened to ‘Thou shalt not judge’? That is where I will end,” she said.

Ecclesiastes 11:5 reads, “As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.”