Reflections on a quiet morning outside the abortion clinic.

Because I am flying out from Heathrow tomorrow I am staying with my parents so I went to the abortion clinic this morning to pray outside with my Mum.  This clinic, unlike the one closest to my own house on the opposite side of the city,  is BPAS (British Pregnancy Advisory Service).  Marie Stopes (the one closest to my house) and BPAS (the one closest to my parents') are the two largest abortion providers in Britain.  Most of these abortions are government funded - funded by the taxes I pay.  The worst thing about it- and brace yourself for this because it actually hurts me when I think about it- the building used to be a Catholic Convent.  Ouch! It is a huge,  beautiful Victorian building and now it is used for this..

We just stood quietly on the opposite side of the street and prayed our Rosary as a witness.  I find it so hard to watch those girls going in and out -I so want to hep them and stop them causing this pain to themselves and their child.  I looked up at that building I noticed something striking: the psychology of it. I realised I have never stood outside an abortion clinic that doesn't have the blinds down and the curtains drawn in almost every room. In a quiet Liberal Democrat, residential area this seems totally unnecessary unless, somewhere within, you feel what you are doing needs to be hidden. It was an empty street on a Thursday morning, a side street at that - rain rather than sun - why hide? That got me thinking about the parallels to Nazi concentration camps- the attempts to sanitise everything and keep the realities from prying eyes. To keep people asleep to the realities because what they don't see can't hurt them.  It was also interesting how everybody going in did so with their head down and rung the doorbell impatiently while they waited a short time as though they were anxious not to be seen.  It wasn't us bothering them - we were just two people standing on a street. I think they felt, even on a subconscious level, that they did not want to be associated with this place or what was happening there.

The thing is there is hope in this because what we can hope that peoples' consciences will one day open their eyes to what is right.  Nothing is impossible for God.  Sometimes we seem to have come so far from our centre of morality that we can perceive no way back. Yet there must be a way back -as with ideologies of the past- as long as there is prayer.