Daniel Frampton, SPUC’s Editorial Officer, reviews the documentary “Young, British and Anti-Abortion”, which aired recently.

Last week, BBC One aired filmmaker Poppy Jay’s one-hour documentary that promised a “rare and fascinating insight” into the UK’s young pro-life adults who are “growing in confidence, profile and money”. 

Jay interviewed several young pro-life men and women and followed their activism on the streets of the UK.

The documentary was a mostly fair and objective portrait of young pro-life activism. Jay treated her subjects with respect, though there was an underlying condescension that, to be fair to her, is inevitable in today’s pro-abortion culture.

Dismantling stereotypes 

Eden McCourt of Abortion Resistance came across especially well. Speaking to Jay about the typical portrayal of pro-life activists, Eden said: “The mainstream media makes it out that they’re all old white religious men, and we are not, we’re just normal young people doing normal things and living normal lives.”

According to its website, Abortion Resistance is the “UK’s newest, youth-led, youth-focused pro-life organization… We disrupt the mainstream narratives that work to normalise abortion.”

Eden and her young pro-lifers seek to engage with the public online, particularly on TikTok where she has received over 3.4 million views. While her videos are direct and to the point, there is no doubting their effectiveness in getting the message across to as many people as possible.

 Abortion Resistance also seeks to engage with ordinary people on the street, as we see in the documentary when its youthful activists set up outside the National Gallery to speak about abortion coercion. While the responses of the public vary – some people just don’t want to listen – their presence in Trafalgar Square goes way some to smashing the pro-life stereotype.

Pro-abortion aggression 

Madeline Page, the director of the Alliance of Pro-Life Students, was also featured. Jay accompanied Madeline to a pro-life talk at the University of Manchester where the meeting was besieged by a loud, threatening mob of pro-abortion student protesters shouting abuse and vile slogans. They even stalked Madeline down a street after the event. 

“It’s actually quite a horrific thing that is happening to me right now”, Madeline says to Jay.

Jay later says that she “wasn’t prepared for how hostile they were… The way they behaved towards her [Madeline] was unacceptable... I mean they weren’t very peaceful.” If she was in Madeline’s situation, she “would have felt scared”, Jay adds.

Madeline, who was brave and never lost her composure throughout the ordeal, explained that “they [the student protesters] think that we’re these really evil people who don’t care about women, and so that just is how they frame the whole debate”.

Jay’s documentary exposed the shocking vilification and abuse that pro-life students face on UK campuses – an ongoing scandal that hasn’t got nearly as much mainstream media coverage as it deserves.

Challenging narratives 

The most powerful pro-life talking point in the documentary was when Eden and Madeline pushed back against the pro-abortion narrative about “choice”. 

“I feel like the feminist movement has been hijacked by this idea that, in order to be free, in order to be equal to men, we have to have the choice of abortion…”, Eden explained to Jay. “I don’t think that equality for women looks like dead children.”

There’s also a moment at the 2024 March for Life in London when Jay challenges Madeline, telling her that women want the freedom to choose abortion because of financial and other difficulties that discourage them from having children.

“I don’t think the scenario you’ve painted to me sounds like choice”, Madeline replies. “It sounds like a woman in a very difficult situation who doesn’t feel like she does have a choice, who feels like their only option is abortion. And that’s not pro-choice.”

Ultimately, Jay didn’t allow herself to be challenged in any meaningful way, which is necessary, I think, not least because she made herself a part of the documentary. Indeed, she informs us throughout the documentary when she believes views are either extreme or understandable, that sometimes she agrees but not totally. It never occurs to her that, from the other point of view, her beliefs might seem extreme or mistaken.

It wasn’t surprising that Jay finds most common ground with Faith Child, a British Christian rapper whose easy liberality is so unchallenging that it hardly seems any different from Jay’s.

Direct and uncompromising activism

Contrast Faith Child with James, 22, a conscientious Christian volunteer for the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) UK whose pro-life activism is direct and uncompromising. Of course, the mainstream doesn’t like to be challenged or made uncomfortable. Why would it? Religion, politics, culture, it’s all the same. This is a problem with society and human nature, of course. It happens to us all.

At least Jay gave her subjects a fair hearing. There are moments when she seems genuinely surprised. Jay didn’t expect to see so many young pro-life people, and there’s a moment when she learns from Eden that it is legal to abort babies with disabilities right up to the moment of birth.

“It’s been eye-opening following this debate. I think I’ve underestimated just how motivated the anti-abortion Gen Z voice really is’, Jay concludes.

“These activists are young, and they are in it for the long term. They know they are not going to change anyone’s mind overnight, and their strong social media presence is just giving them more confidence. Yes, they might be a vocal minority, but they are effective at getting their message across.”

You can watch “Young, British and Anti-Abortion” on BBC iPlayer by clicking here