The journalist cut her off, stating that yesterday her group did attack the car of an Uber driver bringing a woman to the clinic and – according to a cameraman on the scene – causing this woman to fall to the floor of the back of the vehicle, completely traumatized by this assault. Teresa remained cool and as hard as concrete.

‘Is banging on the roof of a car such a terrible thing when a human life is at stake?’

Next to me Elise let out a sigh.

‘I’ve heard it all before,’ she said. ‘The truth is: you can never convince their side to show decency and empathy to those women who are making that very difficult decision – and who are doing anything but murdering –’

She cut herself off when the journalist said that a voice in between these two very different positions was Father Todor Kieuchikov, the parish priest for St Ignatius Loyola in Beverly Hills, who had been an important figure in the local pro-life movement for many years and whose charity, Angels Assist, was funded by ‘the well-known financier, Patrick Kelleher’.

‘Your one-time priest friend has just gotten himself a national profile,’ Elise said.

I said nothing. I just wanted to hear what Todor’s new point of view might be.

His voice now filled the car’s speakers.

‘Let me say from the outset that I am morally and ethically against abortion. And I have convinced many of my parishioners who have been wavering between abortion and bringing the pregnancy to full term to choose life for their child. If the mother is unable or unwilling to raise the child herself we have always been able to place the baby with couples who are desperate for a child or are delighted to add this baby to their family. From my pastoral experience women who agree to abortions often suffer immense regret afterwards – because they know deep down that they have stopped a child from being born. They have denied that child a life. But I know that those who carry the child to full term and give it up for adoption can indeed reach out to that child at a later juncture and even have a relationship with that child. Just as the child might indeed in time want to know his or her biological mother – and will have a possible wonderful reconciliation with that woman.’

Elise was shaking her head.

‘These guys always spin out fairy tales,’ she said. ‘“Possible wonderful reconciliation” … after years, decades of agony.’

All I could think was: what agony is worse? Ending the pregnancy or handing the child to someone else to raise? Father Todor continued: