America’s Millennial Anti-Abortion Group: RISE OF THE RADICALS

A MODERN pro-life church who believe that women should get the death penalty for intentionally aborting their babies are looking to change the face of the anti-abortion movement in the US. With his immaculately groomed beard, tattoos and Aviator sunglasses, the Red Door Ministry’s telegenic pastor, reformed drug addict Jeff Durbin, 38, looks every inch the young, modern-day American hipster. But the group’s views are resolutely old school - they say abortion is ‘worse than the Holocaust’ and regularly enlist children as young as two to picket Planned Parenthood clinics, armed with signs reading 'Babies are murdered here’. Based in Tempe, Arizona, the ministry is run by the Apologia Church, a militantly pro-life group campaigning to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that gave women a constitutional right to an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. The church’s critics accuse it of intimidating women seeking an abortion, but with US president Donald Trump pursuing an aggressively pro-life agenda, pro-choice campaigners fear the right to a legal abortion in the US may be under threat.

Videographer / director: Ruaridh Connellan
Producer: Tom Midlane, Nick Johnson
Editor: Marcus Cooper