A young woman with blue hair and a wide smile cycles past the Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing, west London. When she spots the Sister Supporter volunteers wearing luminous pink tabards emblazoned with the words “pro-choice”, she rings her bell and calls out: “Well done! I think it’s incredible what you have done.”

The group, set up just two years ago, has achieved minor celebrity status in this part of west London. Along with others, it helped convince the council earlier this month to vote in favour of a implementing a buffer zone around the clinic, to protect women from persistent anti-abortion protesters. After a two-month consultation, barring any unforeseen interventions, the ruling will come into effect and the protesters will be pushed back.

“Ealing made history – it had never happened before,” says Bunny Veglio, whose daughter Anna set up Sister Supporter two years ago by putting an advert in the Ealing Gazette.

On the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act, that victory is part of a renewed sense of urgency among the British pro-choice movement. On Thursday, 113 MPs including the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, signed a letter backing calls for similar buffer zones across the country, while other clinics are looking to replicate the success of the campaign in Ealing, perhaps via antisocial behaviour legislation.

“It’s wonderful that we had this victory on the eve of the anniversary,” says Veglio, who recalls marching 30 years ago with a placard stating “Get your rosaries off my ovaries”. “I can’t believe I am still demonstrating about reproductive rights, but it does feel like things have shifted – the zeitgeist couldn’t be more positive.”

But the buffer zone is not yet in place in Ealing. And so, on this bright 50th anniversary morning, a handful of anti-abortion protesters from the Good Counsel Network are gathered outside the gates of the clinic. A few are praying, while two others hand leaflets and pink plastic rosary beads to people going in and out of the gates. None would talk to the Guardian, saying only that they were there to pray.

Stephanie Rayner joins the pro-choice activists campaigning for an end to harassment of women seeking abortions. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

After the Ealing council vote, according to the Good Counsel Network’s Clare McCullough, the group did not harass the women going into the clinic. “I think it’s very clear women entering abortion centres are distressed, full stop. We are not there to add to their distress. The leaflet that we give them lists support available, babysitting, financial help, housing,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“They tried to speak to my friend, she’s only 17,” says one young woman who is waiting outside. “My other friend talked to them so we could get her past. She really didn’t want to talk to them.”

The scene outside the clinic is subdued on Friday, but its clinical operations manager, John Hansen-Brevetti, says women are reduced to tears on a daily basis after being forced to “run the gauntlet”. “It’s not protest and it’s not support, it is cruelty and abuse,” he says. He describes women being addressed as “mum”, told they would be haunted by the ghost of their aborted foetus and confronted with graphic images. He adds that staff are always on hand to escort women on and off the premises and to support them once inside.

One local resident, Marianne Holmes, picks up the laminated images and slogans placed by the protesters on the pavement outside the clinic and drops them in the bin. “There are legal and proper ways to challenge the law in this country,” she says. “Intimidating individuals like this is like schoolyard bullying – even my children know that is wrong.”

Anti-abortion protesters hold a vigil outside the clinic. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

She isn’t the only one supportive of the council’s decision. One woman calls out to the anti-abortion protesters, “You lot need to get a life”, while a jogger waves ironically and shouts: “We’ll miss you.”

Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, who coordinated the MPs’ letter, said the repeated Ealing protests spurred her to act.

“For three decades I have been fuming that these so-called pro-life protesters have been able to upset women seeking medical treatment with their wildly medically inaccurate foetus representations designed to cause alarm, shock and distress,” she says. “Now I hope that very soon we will see no one outside the gates of the clinic, so these women can have the anonymity they need.”



Responding to the letter, the Home Office says it will look at the issues raised, and work with police and local authorities to “ensure they are able to make full use of their existing power” to prevent harassment and intimidation.

But the push has met with fierce resistance from the anti-abortion movement. On Friday, large images of aborted foetuses were displayed in Parliament Square in London, a “new tactic” that the organisers, Abort67 and Christian Concern, admitted might be offensive to some people. Anthony McCarthy, education and communications director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, accuses the “abortion industry” of taking protections away from women, calling Britain’s abortion law “a human rights violation of stunning proportion”.

The founder of Sister Supporter, Anna Veglio-White, says she is proud of what the group has achieved. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

“The letter is frightening in its determination to deny pregnant women the chance of hearing about help to have their babies in the times and places they most need that,” he says. Protesters around the country will not be deterred, he adds. “We all need to wake up and make a stand for genuine human equality, whether in parliament or right where we are.”

Outside the Ealing clinic, one anti-abortion protester says they have been told not to speak to journalists, but quietly adds: “You can’t put a buffer zone around prayer.” When it is suggested that in all likelihood they will not be allowed in the area in six months’ time, another protester says: “Oh, we will. Prayer is a very powerful thing.”

After 50 years, the Abortion Act is in need of attention, campaigners say. They urge the rest of the UK to follow Scotland’s recently announced decision to allow women to take the abortion pill in their own homes. A challenge to the legality of Northern Ireland’s strict abortion law concluded on Thursday, with a decision expected early next year.

But after the victory in Ealing, Anna Veglio-White, who set up Sister Supporter, is positive about the future. “What has happened here is groundbreaking, it feels like something really special,” she says. “In 50 years’ time, I hope we’ll be looking back and seeing that we were a small piece in the puzzle of protecting women’s reproductive rights. I’m really proud of that.”