A pro-life healthcare provider is planning to open a centre in Belfast, in close proximity to the Marie Stopes abortion clinic, the BBC reports.

Stanton Healthcare, which describes itself as “a revolutionary organisation that seeks to replace abortion businesses around the world” aims to open a clinic in Belfast’s Victoria Street by 2015.

According to their website, the not-for-profit organisation offers the full range of maternal healthcare services, including pregnancy counselling, ultrasound scans, pregnancy tests and childbirth education classes. But they do not perform abortions, saying that they “ believe that all life is created with an intrinsic value.” While Stanton Healthcare describes itself as a faith-based organisation, it is not affiliated to any single Christian denomination.

The Belfast clinic, which will be the firm’s first facility outside the USA, was warmly welcomed by Bernadette Smyth of Precious Life, who said that the clinic has the “full support” of the pro-life movement in Northern Ireland, and is a “new revolution in pregnancy care”.

“The potential is there to take away from Marie Stopes in that women will get real care and real options, and that is not happening at the moment”, Smyth told BBC Radio Ulster.

Stanton’s move comes as the Assembly of Northern Ireland prepares to vote on two pieces of abortion legislation. DUP MLA Jim Wells’s amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill would make it illegal to carry out abortions including at private medical centres – essentially closing the loophole that allows the Marie Stopes clinic to operate.

Meanwhile, the Alliance MLA and Justice Minister David Ford is set to publish proposals this Autumn for a change in the law to allow abortion in cases where the child has a life-limiting condition.