Whose Choice Anyway

to Pentecostals praying in tongues under their breath. As Ann Widdecombe MP, who acted as one of our tellers, took her place in front of the Clerk's table to read out the result, a ripple of gentle applause broke out. We had a majority of 45.

During the Committee Stage, too, there were always people in the gallery at the back of the Committee Room praying for the members of the Committee. Some young people from Ichthus Fellowship in South London would use breaks for adjournments or divisions as an opportunity to telephone back to friends in their church to let them know how things were progressing.

One of the most memorable moments of prayer came at the end of the meeting in Belfast. This rally was held just a few days after the Poppy Day Massacre at Enniskillen and given the events in Northern Ireland we considered postponing the meeting. Ultimately we decided to proceed and the meeting was held in Belfast's Europa Hotel (now the Forum) - which has been blown up several times over the last 20 years. Over 800 people crowded into the conference room, and the meeting was chaired by the head of the Belfast LIFE group. On the same platform were Rhonda Paisley, from the Democratic Ulster Unionists, Revd Ian Paisley's daughter; and Eddie McGrady, the Social and Democratic Labour MP for South Down, who is Catholic. The Ulster Unionist MP the Rt Revd Martin Smyth was also on the platform. Clearly the possibility of a war of words could not be ruled out.

The meeting opened in prayer led by a Catholic priest and by a Presbyterian clergyman. It was actually one of the most orderly and well conducted meetings we held. It was marked by three things. During questions a forthright voice announced that he was fed up with all these Christians explaining why they were pro-life. He was an atheist, he told the audience, and he was pro-life too. Second, at the end of the meeting the Chairman invited a few people who had come from his Church, to say a small prayer of thanks. As they were about to begin, a group of Catholic women from the Falls Road asked if they could join in too: perhaps sowing seeds of ecumenism. And third, while that meeting had been under way, the fellowship at St Mary's in Liverpool's Edge Hill district had been meeting to pray for the success of the Belfast meeting. Perhaps here, too, there are possibilities for the three British-Irish cities of Belfast, Liverpool and Glasgow, with their common histories of sectarianism and division, to create greater support for each other.

Of course the Belfast atheist was right, you do not have to be a Christian to be prolife - and there must be no sense of exclusivism about the pro-life movement. One of SPUC's greatest backers is an Orthodox Jew. He has used his wealth to finance the fight of the Opren drugs victims; he helped finance the ships which picked up the drifting Vietnamese boat people; he finances the Freedom of Information campaign and Friends of the Earth. Inevitably, the one cause he finances which