Man who hacked abortion service website jailed

He stole 10,000 database records containing personal details of women who had sought help from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, then threatened to publish them on the internet. James Jeffrey, from Wednesbury in the West Midlands, said he had acted after two women he knew had abortions.

The 27-year old, who boasted about his exploits on Twitter, was jailed after admitting two offences under the Computer Misuse Act: prosecutors said publication of the details would have caused “great anguish” for women who had contacted the charity in confidence.

This was perhaps an exceptional case, but the British Pregnancy Advisory Service has become the target of a new, more aggressive form of protest by anti-abortion activists, often linked to the United States. The 40 Days for Life group, established in the US in 2004, has set up branches in more than a dozen countries including Britain, holding pickets and prayer vigils outside abortion clinics.

Their most recent action, timed to coincide with Lent, attracted one of London’s high-profile bishops, Alan Hopes, to join a vigil outside a city clinic. He described it as a “principled and peaceful statement of opposition to our society’s ‘culture of death'”. But staff at the clinic, and some of the women attempting to go inside, accused the group of trying to film them, and complained of intimidation.

Worrying trend

For BPAS, it is the start of a worrying trend, of British activists “increasingly mimicking the tactics of hardline US groups.” 40 Days of Life insist their campaign is focused entirely around prayer. But they are not the only organisation involved in the new wave of protests. Another US-based group, Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, is holding a protest outside a Marie Stopes facility in Kent later this month: they say another Catholic bishop has pledged to join them.

And a BPAS clinic in Brighton has been regularly targeted by a pro-life group called Abort67, which has been accused of still more extreme tactics. Several of its leaders have been taken to court and charged with public order offences after allegations of harassment, including one from a rape victim who said she had been filmed.

Local MPs Caroline Lucas and Mike Weatherley signed a petition claiming the group “target people who are already in a vulnerable position, trying to stop them exercising their legal right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.” Abort67 also have links across the Atlantic, with an evangelical group called the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Darinka Aleksic, from the pro-choice Abortion Rights campaign, told Channel 4 News that activists had to be wary. “The abortion debate here has at least been carried out in the media, in religious organisations, in appropriate arenas for public debate. But in the last couple of years we’ve seen a change, as US-backed organisations set up here.”

Although the kinds of protests mounted in Britain are nowhere near as extreme as the US, where doctors have been murdered and women visiting clinics have to run a daily gauntlet, Aleksic fears it would be all too easy to cross the line, and said some of the protesters in Brighton had brandished large images of aborted foetuses, and had shown no qualms about filming women. “We expect to see more of this going on”, she said. “Once it becomes acceptable, then others join in.”

Doctors intimidated

BPAS has also expressed concern that the rising numbers of protests outside clinics are “causing anxiety among doctors”. Evidence from the United States shows that a more extreme situation can deter medical staff from getting involved. High profile attacks and intimidation in the 1990s saw a huge fall in the number of abortion providers, down from 2,680 in 1985 to 1,787 in 2005.

After the murder of Dr George Tiller in 2009 by an anti-abortion activist in Kansas, the woman who hoped to replace him said she’d been subjected to a terrifying backlash, including obscene posters, and warnings to check her car for explosives. In the end, she was advised to wear a bullet-proof vest to work.

There’s nothing remotely on that level in Britain: where groups like 40 Days for Life insist they are entirely “legal, peaceful, and prayerful.” Pro-choice groups are trying to keep their counter protests from descending into noisy face-offs, by coming up with more innovative ways of rallying their supporters, including a pledge to donate money to their campaign for every day of a pro-life protest.