Have the heartless zealots stopped, for even one moment, to consider the anguish and confusion these people are experiencing? Their desperate need for calm, objective, non-judgemental support, for someone to sit down with them and explain the options — and I mean all the options, including termination, as well as continuing the pregnancy — so that they can make an informed decision about how to proceed with such a momentous choice, one that may affect their whole lives? Of course they haven’t.

They don’t need to speak to real women, or place themselves in their shoes. Because they have already made up their minds: abortion is always, always, always wrong. They may use the language of compassion and care, they may adopt the rhetoric of choice, they may talk with saccharine sentimentality about saving the lives of little babies.

Yet their sole objective is single-minded and ruthless: to prevent terminations, no matter what the cost to the mother or, ultimately, to the child.

Why Pro-Life Zealots Needed To Show More Compassion (Finola Meredith, Belfast Telegraph)

Ireland’s First Private Abortion Clinic Braced For Protests (Henry McDonald, Guardian)