After a life of living in London, there are still three sights that make me stop, my mouth an open ooh. The first is the queue outside Madame Tussauds on Baker Street, which is, if you’re being pedantic, and I know you always are, three or four queues, each waiting for half a boiling hot day (there are signs pitted along the pavement advising the busloads of visitors to expect to be inside in two hours, or three) to take a selfie with a wax likeness of Johnny Depp or some notorious criminal, having paid a small fortune for the privilege.
The second are the people lining up overnight in freezing weather for the annual Next Christmas sale, who I am convinced are false flag extras, participating in some long-term conspiracy à la 9/11 or the moon landings because, honestly, who cares enough to set their alarm for a half-price Lipsy top?
The third is the sight of “pro-life” protestors flapping their foetus placards outside our Marie Stopes clinics. It was raining when I passed the Fitzrovia clinic the other day, and a group of people holding umbrellas (including a man with long blond rock-god hair and some natty rosaries who was guarding the door with venom) had gathered with placards and bibles in order to make pregnant girls think twice. I stopped for a moment, contemplating whether or not it was worth talking to them, asking them whether maybe their time would be better spent helping living children, rather than crowding the pavement to shout at sad women in bad weather, like fans at a Zoella book launch. My new thing is “empathy”, but it was raining.
One issue I have, apart from all the “mind your own bloody business, you awful people”, is the method of protest itself. Standing there shouting at women in trouble, the idea is ideally, what? For her to see the photos blown up to A1 size, of the foetus born at six weeks or whatever that went on to live a happy life and now has three children of his own, of all the red-paint-blood spatter and for her to hear their prayers and be saved? Or at least be so intimidated by the strangers shouting at her that she gets back on the tube and makes an appointment somewhere else, quickly. Is it worth it? Is it worth their time? Or isn’t it a bit, I don’t know, shit? As a plan? Isn’t it a bit like spilling someone’s pumpkin spice latte rather than going after Starbucks for tax avoidance? Or vegetarians screaming at pigs? Don’t attack the people who need help, idiots. If you want to fight abortion, fight the government that sanctions it. Or, even simpler, just don’t have an abortion. There.
Last week, politicians from Ealing council voted to take the first step towards creating a “buffer zone” around the Marie Stopes West London Centre, a clinic that’s been targeted by anti-abortion protesters for years. At the meeting, councillors were shown footage of a woman being followed in by a man calling out “Mum” as he rattled his rosary beads, and anti-abortion activists holding up images of mutilated foetuses. One entry from the staff logbook read: “Client very tearful after being called a murderer.” The vote, taken in this gentle west London suburb, is being hailed as an important leap forward for abortion rights in the UK.
Which is a rare blast of goodness in a news cycle that is otherwise a fatberg of horror for women. A wodge of sexual harassment sluiced down with rape allegations. The realisation that, however many men are punished for bullying and abusing their female staff, the project is worthless if it doesn’t destabilise the pyramids of power in every industry that allows girls to be exploited, hourly. A huge blockage in our collective sewer, a mound of evidence that women are routinely crushed, forgotten, ignored, damned. And then this, a crumb of success. A suggestion, however faint, that we are being listened to.
While it might remove some familiar texture from a walk through the city, the loss of these organised sites of harassment would make us feel not just less confused, less angry, but safer, too.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
