How wrong can Rupa Huq be? Very wrong, when she is talking about women and abortion. The Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton is tabling an amendment to the Police, Crimes, Sentencing and Courts Bill with the aim of introducing nationwide buffer zones around abortion facilities in England and Wales.

Dr Huq is determined to ban women from receiving the last minute help available when a peaceful pro-life vigil is taking place. She is determined to stamp out any idea that a woman could be uncertain about going ahead with an abortion. She refuses to recognise that there are women arriving at abortion clinics who have been coerced into abortion; women who are terrified of their abusive partners. Dr Huq will not countenance that there are some women who are walking in through the door of an abortion clinic and they do not want to abort their baby. But there are such women, and a caring pro-lifer directly outside the clinic is the only help they will get.

Yesterday afternoon painted the all too familiar picture of what does not happen at a pro-life vigil. Dr Huq spoke about pro-lifers telling women that they “are going to hell”. She claims that women are “filmed, followed and given propaganda that is inevitably medically wrong and unwanted.” Wrong, wrong, wrong, Dr Huq.

The “medical information” shown to women by pro-lifers outside abortion clinics, is often simple pictures of an unborn baby.  This is not incorrect. One study has found that women do not see their baby as a threat and feel positively towards the baby. Rather, reports this study, it is the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy which drive women to abortion.[1] It is precisely because pro-lifers at a vigil can give women the practical and emotional support they need that so many of them keep their baby.

Yesterday Dr Huq said that pro-life vigils are “not healthy, noisy protest but the shaming of individual vulnerable women”. Pro-life vigils are not protests and they are not noisy. Many participants spend their time praying quietly.  Pro-lifers are not shaming women - they are loving them. As to Rupa’s insinuation that pro-life vigils are not “healthy”, on the contrary the health and wellbeing of women is of the great concern to pro-lifers who know only too well the damage that abortion does to women.

Also, perhaps predictably, Dr Huq spoke about rape in her brief speech on the floor of the House of Commons. The number of women seeking abortion for rape is very small. But it is an incendiary word and Rupa knows it. It is important that we keep clear in our minds the pro-life position on rape. As my former colleague Fiorella Nash wrote, “it is assumed that rape victims will always have abortions”. Abortion is never the solution to rape. As Fiorella aptly stated: “The horrific effects of rape will remain with her for the rest of her life, whether or not she gives birth. To suggest otherwise trivializes the traumatic effect of rape on a woman’s life”.  Again, Dr Huq betrays a lack of understanding, not to say compassion, for the real issues women face. In Fiorella’s words: “A truly just society protects women from rape, cares for and supports the victims of rape and punishes the men responsible for these crimes.”

Here at SPUC we have been keeping an eye the Police, Crimes, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Last November we made a submission on behalf of the Society to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, stating expressly that the Police Powers and Protections Bill, as it was then called, should not be used to bring in a national ban on pro-life vigils.

Dr Huq’s vision is for buffer zones around the premises of every abortion provider in England and Wales. This is effectively a ban on helping women keep their babies. SPUC is committed to fighting this measure. However, the challenge ahead will be how pro-lifers can rescue those women who will never come near an abortion facility because the only option will be to abort their baby at home.