Please find below a copy of our statement released to the Exeter Overheard group, outlining our next steps. Thank you for the continued support!

Dear all,

Following your support of our petition for the Guild to strike down the Exeter Students for Life society, we wanted to give an update on the steps we are taking to further the campaign.

1) We have today issued a formal complaint to the Students Guild, after the lukewarm response posted on their website. Free speech must not be to the detriment of human rights, and as we know, it is a woman's human right to have a safe abortion. We also have, again, drawn attention to the dangerous comments (now edited) written by members and have photographic evidence of them if required

2) Our aim is to communicate the exceptionalism of this society to the Guild and have it struck down. No other society actively goes against human rights. We believe Guild policy needs to be revised

3) We are in contact with various media outlets

4) We have seen that an open letter was created by others. We urge you to sign the letter - it is featured on the Instagram account 'safesexe', in conjunction with signing the petition. This joint effort increases the chance of success.

5) We wanted to make it clear that we do not support any of the hateful comments/abuse directed at members of the society. Our campaign is based around fighting against hate speech, not fuelling it.

Thank you for all of the support!

Isobel Maddocks Lauren Katie George Adamson