[Clair Rees talking to camera interspersed with other footage]

[Walking to market stall]

My name's Clair Rees. I work in London as a co-ordinator for Life. Life is a national pro-life charity, we aim to provide an alternative to abortion. Some of those alternatives are our housing and caring, our education programmes, a natural fertility programme, a helpline service and a text-to-talk service. Much of the work we do is out in the community, creating an awareness of the services that we provide. The baby models that we use are development stages throughout the womb.

- 'If you lift them up, that's the actual weight of that development stage in the womb'
- 'Gosh, they're really heavy!'
- 'Yeah. Is it heavier than what you thought?'
- 'Definitely'

We have all different sorts of reactions.

- 'He was never this small!'

Some people when they see them are just horrified, because they are so real and very emotive, and some people are really taken with them if, for example, they have a family.

- 'This is how you felt and this is how big you were when you were born. Just like that!'

[Tracy arriving at a Life house, shots of mother, child, staff members in garden]

This year is the 30th anniversary of our Life Care & Housing. We've achieved a lot in that time, but we realise we've got a long way to go to make abortion a rarity.

I'm Tracy. I'm a support service manager for Life Housing

- 'Morning!' [Greeting as door opens]

Life Housing has 33 Life Houses around the country. I manage seven of them.
Life Housing is supported accommodation for young ladies pregnant and/or with their young children. They're homeless and have support needs. Generally that makes them young and quite vulnerable. We house them, they have a tenancy for their own room. We support them with an individual support plan once a month and a life skills programme. Daily they will do some sessions. They will do kitchen skills, money and budgeting, work and career, and practical skills, to help them get ready for independent living in their own homes.

The services we offer at Life are available to everyone, but in recent years, we have noticed a client increase from the migrant population. Many of the clients that we are seeing are Catholic. We often ask people that walk through our doors: 'Where did you hear about our service?' For many, the answer is from their church noticeboard. We foresee an increasing number of migrants coming to us through the Catholic Church. For us in Life this is a focus and priority. Within our caring centres, we offer free pregnancy testing, counselling, ongoing support to women, and help with practical equipment and baby clothes. We offer maternity grants from our Gemma fund and are a general signpost into other referral agencies.

[Arriving at a Life Care Centre - shots of magazines in different languages, Clair translating documents, volunteers and counselling room.]

This is our pregnancy care centre in Hounslow. There's a huge diversity of cultures and languages spoken here. Amazingly, 144 languages are spoken in this area alone.

Inside our caring centre, we try to provide an environment that would make people feel at home, regardless of their language, culture or background. One thing we have realised at Life, is that if we want to raise awareness of the services we have to provide to the migrant communities, that it's vital that we translate our caring leaflets and posters.

So this is the main part of our Life Care Centre, and here we have two of our volunteers, Wanda, who is doing the administrator side, and this is Truda, who is arranging some of our lovely baby packages. And I'll just show you into our counselling room. This is all very confidential, it's a soundproof room.

When a client comes through to our counselling room, it's often the first opportunity that that client has had to open up to really what's going on inside. It's often easier for a client to talk in a confidential manner, outside of their family and friends' environment.

[London crowds, Clair walking]

Pope John Paul II emphasised the need for compassion and mercy upon women that have had an abortion. One of the ways that Life is trying to meet the needs of women suffering post-abortion syndrome is to set up a network of post-abortion support groups throughout the country.

Abortion affects all of us in many different ways. At Life, we aim to make abortion a rarity. But we also are here to help anyone that has suffered a loss.

[Ends]

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