I've just got back from Bedford Square and here follows a brief report. I'll go into more detail tomorrow.
I think the numbers game - and let's face it, this was never about numbers, nor was it a game - has been misreported already.
40 Days for Life vigil attendees were by no means 'vastly outnumbered'. We were huddled in a large circle, whereas protesters were behind a fence and the lines were not, from what I could see, particularly deep.
I couldn't actually hear very well what Bishop Alan Hopes was saying through a megaphone because the wailing, shouting, jeering, drumming and screaming coming from the pro-abortion protesters was so excruciatingly loud. We just got on with praying the Stations of the Cross and saying prayers for the unborn and all at risk of abortion and all affected by it.
You'll be not too surprised to hear that the chants and slogans of today's abortion rights people are not much different to the previous generation's. The one about the 'Church and the State' is still there. 'Keep your Rosaries off my ovaries' is still going strong. Anyone would have thought that the slogans were peddled out by an aging Tablet reader in Eccleston Square. 'Keep your Pope away from my pussy' was another, so now our beloved Pontiff is accused of cat burglary as well as orchestrating the world's largest pederast network.
One woman spent about half an hour prowling around those keeping vigil shouting at men and women, from whom she was about a yard away, "Stop harrassing women", when, in fact we were just praying and she was, yep, harassing women (and men). A new slogan was, 'Keep your Eucharist out of my uterus' or something, as if we desire to thrust the Most Holy Eucharist down anyone's throats or other orifices, or put our Rosaries anywhere near anyone's ovaries. That would, I believe, be both sacrilege and a grave invasion of the human body which can only be rivaled by a 'Gynaecological Surgeon' taking implements, shoving them up a woman's vagina, killing her child and dragging it out by the feet.
When the 40 Days for Life vigil-keepers sang the
'Ave Maria' repetitively, there were, at times, strange periods of silence from the pro-abortion protesters. I don't know whether Our Lady just got them to shut up or they liked the singing and found it rather beautiful. It was very odd, those moments when it felt like the shouting, screaming, chant and slogan-singing, drumming, angry and aggressive mob looked rather deflated and as if they were thinking of packing up and going home.
It's hard to find moments of humour in such a solemn vigil for the unborn and all affected by abortion, but I must say that, despite the fact that 40 days for life were haranguing and harassing no woman, the pro-abortion crowd started shouting at us to "stop harassing women" when people were singing the
Ave Maria gently over and over. Yes, the only woman we were harassing all evening was the Blessed Mother of God!
In conclusion: Drumming, shouting, screaming, slogan-shouting, whooping, slogan-singing, football-terrace like chants, banners about abortion, harassment of those who hold the opposite view to yourself, turning out in great force and being genuinely intimidating and making an almighty commotion that means that the voices of those who oppose you are barely audible - these are all tactics which we as pro-lifers can learn from the 'pro-choice' movement in the UK. Probably best we stick to silent witness, vigil and prayer, I think, because the only thing you really learn from listening to the pro-abortion protesters is a lesson in hatred. The hatred was all theirs, of course, by the end, I think most pro-lifers felt pity for them. I was told there was a particularly loud screeching 'wail' from the pro-aborts at the announcement of the Station of the Cross at which Our Lord died.
Oh and the other slogan that was repeated over and over again by the pro-abortionist government supporters who turned out in force, but with little charity, was "40 Days for Life, go home!" Has nobody told the pro-abortionists that 40 Days for Life are going home in two days, when, er, 40 Days for Life ends? It seems odd to turn out in such number to tell us to 'go home' when if they'd just left it a day or two, the rather low-key vigil keepers would have done exactly that anyway. Still, logic and reason isn't one of the great gifts of the pro-abortion movement in the United Kingdom, is it? From what I could see tonight, they're just an angry and aggressive mob who behaved as if they were not only children of the Devil, but of the State as well.
"Shame on you! Shame on you!" they cried. Hang on, isn't that what some US pro-lifers in the seventies used to shout at women going into abortion clinics? My, how times have changed and yet the times, they are-a-changin'.
It looks rather like the pro-aborts are far more 'American' in style than us. We shouldn't be too surprised by that, though. After all, it was the
Rockefellers of this world that have donated so much money to the cause of abortion across the West, Africa and across the World, who continue to do so and who 'sit back and laugh
as the death count gets higher'. I personally believe that if everyone stopped procuring abortion in the UK, the State would enforce it, for this is a war on its own people and population. It is so sad that even anarchists, feminists and 'freedom fighters' are oblivious to that sad truth. Marxists, of course, wouldn't have a problem with it.
Thanks to Sarto for the
YouTube video.
