Anti-abortion protesters outside clinics are not only causing great distress, they’re damaging their own cause.

On the weekend protesters gathered outside a Finsbury Park clinic to "pray" for the women getting abortions and for the "lives lost",

There are calls for laws creating exclusion zones around clinics to stop the distress caused. It is unfortunate that a law is needed.

My outlook on the world is utterly different to those protesters but it is always important to consider others' points of view. For those people the foetus in pregnancy is as much a human life as a baby and this belief, of course, in their own minds gives them a justification for all sorts of actions.

But as well as disagreeing with their word view, I think their tactics are foolish. They're not winning hearts and minds, they're just bullying vulnerable people.

In making the lives of some people that bit worse, they are harming their own cause.

The claim that they are simply praying for the people involved is simply nonsense. Surely they're not saying God only hears their prayers if they are stood on one particular pavement? That would be a remarkable limit to God's ability, or God's grace. No, this is using emotional violence to try to achieve a goal, and it is both wrong and misguided.