During the ‘March for Choice’ held in London last year, a small group of pro-abortion protestors loudly sang “We need abortions, because it’s quite alright” to the tune of 1960s ballad “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You“.
In 2019, they sang the same version of the song in an attempt to drown out the speech of Melissa Ohden, who gave a heartbreaking testimony about surviving an abortion. Pro-abortion activists in Northern Ireland also used the same chant while travelling to a 2019 demonstration in Belfast.
Only around 40 people attended the UK ‘March for Choice’ held in London last year. The demonstration was organised as a counter to the UK March for Life scheduled for the same time.
Abortion Rights UK posted a Facebook Event to advertise the gathering, which received 9 responses out of their page’s over 5,000 followers.
The event had been advertised significantly by a variety of ‘pro-choice’ social media channels and by a number of organisations.
The group shouted at the pro-life demonstrators throughout the march, and during the concluding speeches in Parliament Square. They continued to shout and scream throughout an emotional speech given by a woman who had been pressured into an at-home medical abortion aged 19.
The letter shared by Abortion Rights UK ahead of the march accused March for Life UK of “want[ing] to set women’s rights back by decades”, “call[ing] for a complete banning of women’s right to access reproductive health care”.
Several speeches took place in which the UK’s restriction of abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy was lamented.
The pro-choicers also chanted and sang ‘pro-abortion’ versions of a popular song, as they also did in 2019.
A spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said: “Not only was this clearly a poor turnout for an organisation that claims to represent the majority, but it appears that the organisers of the march, Abortion Rights UK were so insecure about this lack of momentum that they decided to reshare the video of their singing from the 2019 protest rather than publicly share a recording from their seemingly much smaller gathering at the 2021 demonstration”.
“Yet the low support for their cause at the march is hardly surprising given that nationwide polling shows that just 1% of the general population support the pro-choice campaigners’ goal of introducing abortion up to birth”.
