Women in Leeds have a long tradition of fighting for their rights, from the earliest days of the suffrage movement to the mass clothing workers’ strikes in the 60s.

So when there was a move only a few years later to restrict the rights women had been given by the 1967 Abortion Act, it wasn’t surprising that women came together from all over the city to defend a woman’s right to choose. It was an exciting, challenging, very busy time.

We set up a campaigning group, painted and sewed banners, held meetings, organised lively protests in the city centre, took part in a huge demonstration in London, lobbied local MPs and campaigned in our workplaces and local communities. And after that campaign was won we had learned how to organise against further attempts to limit women’s choice which were made over the coming years.

That was a long time ago but even now when I go on the bus past Browning House, a former mother and baby home on Chapeltown Road, I often think about all those babies who were born there before there was a choice and their mothers who were forced to give them up for adoption. A loss they mourned for decades, often in silence, often alone.

We may have won those campaigns but we still don’t take those rights for granted especially when we can see in countries like the US and Poland how easily rights that have been given can be taken away. We don’t know what might happen in the future but I’m sure that women in Leeds will always come together to defend a woman’s right to choose. Just as we did all those years ago.