An extremist group is set to bring the militant tactics of American anti-abortionists to England later this month.
The Christian activists, called Precious Life, will launch their trademark intimidation and leafleting at schools, abortion clinics and family planning centres in London and Liverpool.
Led by Scottish father-of-three and former Orangeman Jim Dowson, the far-right group is expanding from its base in Scotland to open a new office in Liverpool and is planning a third in London.
Dowson told The Observer he hoped to publish on the internet names and addresses of nurses working in 'death mills'. 'We want to let the whole of Britain know who they are, these men and women with knives in their hands. We are exposing abortion for what it is. It's vile - similar to paedophilia.'
Family planning agencies, women's rights campaigners and nurses' unions have been meeting to discuss the threat.
'We are incredibly worried at any threat to picket anywhere where women go for help and advice,' said Sarah Colbourne of the National Abortion Campaign. 'Neither nurses or doctors or vulnerable women deserve to be bullied like that.'
The group has staged noisy demonstrations at Scottish hospitals, centres and politicians' homes, handing graphic leaflets showing aborted foetuses to children. Scottish Health Minister Susan Deacon has threatened them with legal action.
Precious Life claims 1,200 members. Its steering committee is anonymous apart from 20-year-old student nurse Anne-Marie Willis, who recently emerged as the female face of the group, and former sales manager Dowson, who refers constantly to babies 'having their heads ripped off'.
'It's taken 10 years for the American pro-life movement to get as successful as it is so we know we have a way to go,' he said. We do not advocate violence. We want to mobilise Christians and the evangelical movement. We're starting in Liverpool because we have a lot of activists there.'
Precious Life grew out of Ireland's Youth Defence movement, linked with militant anti-abortion groups in the US, who have burnt down 12 clinics and killed four doctors since 1994.
Other UK pro-lifers, including the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, distance themselves from Youth Defence, which claims to have the support of the Pope.
In 1995, Youth Defence leaders Naimh Nic Mhathuna and John Heaney had a private audience with the Pope and claimed he told them Ireland 'was under attack' by pro-abortionists and to 'continue in your apostolate and be courageous'.
Next month Youth Defence hosts a pro-life conference in Rome where US Christian Defence Coalition leader Patrick Mahoney will speak.
Mahoney is infamous for trying to give President Clinton a 15-week aborted foetus during the Paula Jones scandal. His group pickets abortion clinics every day, bringing their children to remind patients of 'God's little image bearers'.
'Pat Mahoney has a keen interest in our group,' said Justin Barrett of Youth Defence in Dublin. 'A few years ago he funded a campaign for us but the vast majority of our funding comes from our donors in Ireland, although we have quite a few in Britain too. We wrote to them when Jim Dowson set up the Scottish branch and asked them to help.'
Last year the Scottish Catholic Herald newspaper donated payment for a Precious Life advert to charity after learning that Dowson was once an Orange Lodge member and had supported loyalist Michael Stone, who shot mourners at an IRA funeral. Belfast's Ulster Pregnancy Advisory Association closed after Precious Life picketed the home of one of its workers chanting 'murderer'.
'For days after, children were cycling up and down my road saying that babies were being murdered here,' the woman said. Not long after, the centre was firebombed.
Dowson denies that the demonstration contributed to the attack and told The Observer the office was torched because of sectarian violence. The centre was one of only two in Belfast willing to advise women about contraception and abortion.
NHS abortions are not available to women in Northern Ireland, who instead travel to England, having had to raise around £500 to finance the journey and the operation.
'That is not a situation we would ever want to see in mainland Britain,' said Juliette Hillier of the Brooks Advisory Clinics, who condemned Precious Life's 'misleading and highly emotive' literature.
