SOCIAL LIBERALISM IS a funny thing; just like that, it can flip into social intolerance. So it’s not altogether surprising that Ealing Council has by unanimous vote banned anti-abortion protesters from demonstrating outside the local Marie Stopes abortion clinic. The Catholic organisation, The Good Counsel Network, has been subjected to a Public Spaces Protection Order to ensure its members no longer hand leaflets and other things to women entering the clinic.

Anna Veglio-White, co-founder of Sister Supporter, said that women attending the clinic had been offered teddy bears and asked to pick pink or blue rosaries for the sex of their unborn child and that priests had asked women to “give their child a birthday present”.