Northern Ireland pro choice campaigners like the Alliance for Choice's Goretti Horgan say that pro life groups are playing nastier than ever as the pro and anti choice campaigns gain momentum.
Horgan says that pro life groups plan to take the low step of bussing schoolchildren to demonstrations against extending the Act, to show that Northern Ireland youth is opposed to legal abortion.
Fellow Alliance for Choice campaigner Annie Campbell told a recent Westminster pro choice rally that it was almost impossible to get women who'd had abortions to speak publicly about their experiences, because they expect - and generally get - vitriol.
All that aside , Northern Ireland pro choice campaigners feel that their biggest obstacle might just turn out to be our very own Gordon Brown - famed bankers' saviour and leader reborn.
The Northern Ireland women are of the opinion that Brown did an anti abortion deal with the pro life Demoractic Unionists in exchange for the DUP's support on 42 days' detention.
They are as keen as I am to be proved greviously wrong on this: as Horgan says, if Gordon did such a deal, he did it comfortable in the knowledge that women's health and women's lives are neither here nor there.
With recession rolling out across our little isles, Northern Ireland pro choice campaigners expect legal abortion in Northern Ireland to become even more necessary. Without legal abortion, women will have to keep finding the money to travel to England for legal abortion. That will be a challenge if there's no money to find.
These photos were taken at the Alliance for Choice rally on 8 October 2008. The photo essay starts here. Navigate to each photo for quotes from the women.
