We've just completed largest and most exciting campaign to date since 40 Days for Life started on the British Isles.

Eleven campaigns were organised in total.

For the first time, we had four campaigns in Scotland; abortions are only performed in hospitals in Scotland.

Edinburgh and Glasgow culminated their witness outside hospitals with some beautiful candlelit vigils on the penultimate day of the campaign. 85 people joined in Edinburgh to conclude the city?s first campaign. 30 candles were left as a reminder of the 30 abortions that happen in Scotland every day.



In Edinburgh, Archbishop Leo Cushley joined the vigil, while other bishops in Scotland were also supportive. The vigil reported a lot of healing happening at the vigil, while many people have shared their powerful personal stories.

In Glasgow, 118 people attended the final candle lit hour which was beautiful and peaceful. As the sun was setting, one participant said it reminded her that God gives life and God takes away. There have been many courteous exchanges at the vigil, including with hospital staff keen to voice their opinions and those sharing post abortion experiences.

In Aberdeen, hundreds of Aberdeen university students were upset that a Catholic chaplaincy had posters advertising a 40 Days for Life event!

A spokesperson Bishop High Gilbert of Aberdeen said: ?Freedom of speech and expression should be at the heart of academic life. The decision by the Catholic chaplaincy to display a poster advertising a peaceful pro-life vigil cannot in any way be deemed harmful or distressing.

?The 40 Days for Life vigils are peaceful, yet poignant reminders of the tragic reality of abortion. Almost half a million unborn lives have been lost in Scotland since the 1967 Abortion Act was passed and it continues to carve a deep scar on our society.

?It is a matter for individual groups to decide how best to draw attention to the fact that we live in a society which does not always protect the sanctity of human life in a civil, legal and peaceful way.?



At the London vigil, 17 women changed their mind and didn?t go ahead with the abortion in Ealing Marie Stopes thanks to some excellent pavement counselling. The abortion centre is located in a former Christian house of spiritual healing. The Daily Mail ran a story saying how abortions had been illegally organised after just a phone call.

Feminists turned up at the vigil on a weekly basis to shout and behave appallingly. But leader Bernadette has said that the presence of the feminists has helped their campaign as more people have come to support and more prayers are being said. We thank God for the hearts and minds and little lives saved during the campaign in London. On one day in Ealing 4 women changed their mind. 3 women said that they were keeping their babies and another women went for an appointment with a crisis pregnancy centre.



In Doncaster, the vigil participants saw two women change their minds. A young couple had returned to the clinic after being turned away from their first appointment some days ago as the mother had been unwell. It seems social workers were pressurising them to abort. After exiting the clinic they told volunteers that they had to leave because they knew it wasn?t right to kill their baby. They described the atmosphere in the clinic as a "slaughter house" where "women were lined up on a conveyer belt." They prayed with the volunteers who told them practical ways in which they could be supported.

Another woman who had been considering abortion for five weeks in Doncaster chose life. She approached the volunteers after exiting the clinic. She asked them what they were doing before telling them that she was a single mum who had been considering abortion for 5 weeks. She said that although she was struggling financially, she knew that it would be unfair to kill her unborn child. She was in a rush to leave the place but asked the volunteers for prayers.



In Birmingham, ambulances arrived twice at the abortion centre during Lent. Some people say, we don?t want to go back to the old days of unsafe abortions, but these women weren?t expecting to be carried out on a stretcher in 2017. Abortion is harmful to the mother and deadly to the child.

Many lives were saved in Birmingham this Lent. A couple came to Marie Stopes with their children after their Doctor recommended aborting their new baby because they had three other children. Thankfully they changed their minds after speaking to a volunteer.

Another couple took one of the leaflets as they drove into Marie Stopes. After their initial appointment they came out to the volunteers and thanked them for the leaflet saying it had made them think again and they would now be keeping the baby.

A man spoke to one of the volunteers, had a change of heart and went to his girlfriend inside the abortion centre and encouraged her to leave. On 10 March another couple changed their minds at the vigil.



In Nottingham, leader John Edwards reported that his vigil outside the Hospital was having a big impact. The Nottingham vigil got considerable media coverage this campaign from the BBC and local media, along with a litany of grace filled conversations with passers by.

They have also faced incidents of opposition. In the first week of the campaign, a conversation started with a young woman who told them that what they were doing was disgusting and harmful to women. After 30 minutes of vigorous discussion and information, she went away with the beginnings of a better understanding of why people think that abortion is wrong. What began as an unpromising and unfriendly interaction ended very positively indeed and no doubt the conversation will have affected her thinking in the future.



In Manchester, to date it has been reported that four lives have been saved from abortion. In the afternoon of 9 March, a woman came 10 to 12 weeks pregnant because she had a difficult first pregnancy with complications. She decided she couldn?t go ahead with the abortion because she realised that her first baby needed a brother or sister. She cried with joy with her decision and waved goodbye as she left in a taxi.

One day two 14-year-old schoolgirls some distance from the clinic were looking hesitant and pointing to the clinic. One girl said she wasn?t sure if she was pregnant because her period was very late. The volunteer advised her to check that first, but told her the Marie Stopes clinic did abortions.

She gave them our client envelope with numbers to ring for help and counselling and told them that pregnancy tests were available at GPs. They were worried their parents might find out so the volunteer suggested they go to Sainsbury?s to buy a pregnancy test if they were happy with this. They were concerned about the volunteer paying for it but they were reassured and agreed.

Another volunteer joined them to help. Together, they recommended finding someone they could trust to speak to.

Two clinic workers came storming angrily towards them shouting that they were harassing the girls and committing unlawful action which they would report. When asked if they were being harassed, the girls replied: ?No, they are not harassing us, they are helping us. We are fine?.

Both the girls smiled and said how grateful and thankful they were for the help, apologising again if they had caused any trouble from the clinic.

The clinic staff came out shouting a second time when another volunteer arrived at the vigil. The nurses insisted that the volunteers were telling lies and that the girls were on their way home from school and should not have been approached. The volunteers knew that the girls didn?t live in the same road as the clinic which is a cul-de-sac inhabited mainly by students. The parting words of the girls were: 'We think you are all doing the right thing.'

On the 17 March, a volunteer spoke at length to a woman heavily pregnant as she went into the clinic. She came out of the clinic after some time saying that she was keeping her baby and thanking the volunteer who had spoken with her, saying ?It was just what I needed.?



In Cardiff, the prayer vigil is on the high street of the city in a very prominent place. The vigil has been heavily protested, but there have been plenty of graces and grace filled encounters with passers by thanks to the valiant work of Janet Thomas.

A first time campaign was organised in Liverpool, where approximately 5,000 abortions happen a year. The Care Quality Commission investigated the centre after 16 serious incidents over three years, including 8 serious injuries between January 2015 and March 2016. Dirty linen, expired equipment and lack of resuscitation equipment were mentioned in the report.

Ann Furedi had previously said that failure of clinical governance should be a resignation issue for a chief executive. If she had integrity, she would in her own words, resign. University student Declan Carrroll signed up to be the local leader of the campaign and to reach out to women in need with a message of hope and love.

These stories are just a fraction of the total stories from even one vigil from around the country. Overall, God has provided many wonderful miracles and will continue to do so in the coming years. The question is whether we will unite with His will to accomplish the same mission saving lives and changing the culture one person at a time.

The future looks very promising indeed as an opportunity to save more lives than ever before and to challenge the cultural status quo from a culture of death to a culture of life. If more Christians knew about even a fraction of the blessings we have witnessed - then surely this campaign will continue to spread virally around the country and the world.