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SPUC challenges claims of BBC Panorama Programme in open letter to Greg Dyke
LONDON 27 October: SPUC has sent an open letter to BBC Director General Greg Dyke, challenging the BBC to back up claims made about the Catholic Church's pro-life teaching in its recent Panorama programme Sex and the Holy City. The 'investigation', which was screened to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II pontificate, made a one-sided and unsubstantiated attack on Church teaching, claiming that the Pope's personal views on issues such as abortion and contraception are causing misery and death in the developing world. In a letter which detailed specific concerns, SPUC national
director John Smeaton stated: "Not only did Sex and the Holy City fail
to support such serious charges with objective, verifiable evidence,
but there were also many other claims made in support of the general
thesis of the programme which fly in the face of statistical, medical
and scientific evidence from recognised and authoritative sources."
Full text of this letter can be found below.
For further information, contact John Smeaton on: 020 7222 5845 or 07785 325808
Mr G Dyke
Director General
BBC Broadcasting House
London
W1A 1AA
27 October 2003
Dear Mr Dyke,
I write to raise serious concerns and to pose a number of
questions about the BBC Panorama programme, Sex and the Holy City,
broadcast on Sunday 12th October.
Under the guise of serious reporting, the programme purported
to show that Catholic Church teaching on abortion and contraception was
costing the lives of thousands of women worldwide and condemning
families to lives of poverty.
However, not only did Sex and the Holy City fail to support
such serious charges with objective, verifiable, evidence, but there
were also many other claims made in support of the general thesis of
the programme which fly in the face of statistical, medical and
scientific evidence from recognised authoritative sources. My letter is
divided into three sections covering the three main countries covered
by the programme.
Nicaragua
1) "... where official estimates suggest one in three women has
been physically or sexually abused, and where age and close
relationships are sometimes no barrier to abuse."
What is the precise source for this figure? Its use in the
introduction to a rape pregnancy case is misleading, as 'physical or
sexual abuse' is a broad term used to cover everything from smacking to
penetrative rape. As any child protection expert could have pointed
out, 'age and close relationships' virtually never form a barrier to
abuse as the majority of abuse cases occur within families.
2) "We met the girls [incest victims with babies] in a woman's
health clinic run by Dorothy Granada. She says such cases are not
unusual."
This is an extremely dubious claim that flies in the face of
both statistical and medical evidence. Firstly, conception following
rape is rare. Secondly, a sustained pregnancy [viz., a pregnancy that
does not end in natural miscarriage] as the result of rape is in itself
rare and there are sound biological reasons for this, e.g. the trauma
of rape causing natural miscarriage. A sustained pregnancy as the
result of the rape of a 12-to-14-year-old is therefore a fortiori
extremely uncommon. However, Dr Granada's claim went entirely
unchallenged by Mr Bradshaw. The Church's offer of pastoral support to
such women who have been harmed by rape was barely mentioned.
3) "Although they can apply for legal abortions if their lives are in danger, few succeed."
It is regrettable that this received wisdom was endorsed rather
than questioned. As early as 1992, Ireland's foremost gynaecologists
and obstetricians stated unequivocally: "As obstetricians and
gynaecologists, we affirm that there are no medical circumstances
justifying direct abortion, that is, no circumstances in which the life
of a mother may only be saved by directly terminating the life of her
unborn child." (Ireland's medical profession has a first-class record
in caring for mothers and their unborn children: see point 12 below).
4) The case of Rosa: "She wasn't like someone whose body is
capable of surviving pregnancy when they become pregnant ... so we had
the pregnancy terminated because she didn't want to die."
Where is the medical evidence to back up such a serious claim?
Furthermore, why did the programme-makers omit the gynaecological
evidence put forward by Dr Rafael Cabrera on the case, having taken the
trouble to interview him? Why also were attempts by the Church and the
Ministry of Health to help the child in question ignored by the
programme?
5) "It is thought there could be as many as 60,000 illegal abortions in Nicaragua every year."
Where is the reference for this figure, or indeed, the figures
quoted in 6) and 7) below? Estimated figures surrounding illegal
abortion have often been shown, in the course of serious objective
research, to have been wildly exaggerated. For example, in 1982 it was
claimed that 2,000 women died in Portugal every year as a result of
illegal abortion. The figure was published in serious news reports
including the BBC, even though the UN Demographic Yearbook found that
only 2,099 women in their main childbearing years died from all causes
in Portugal during the year for which statistics were most recently
available. Either Portugal had an extraordinary absence of fatal
accidents and disease amongst younger women or the 2,000 figure was a
pure fantasy. In Britain, it was suggested that, before the passing of
the Abortion Act, there were as many as 100,000 or even 250,000 illegal
abortions carried out every year. However, in 1966, the Royal College
of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists stated that "these, and an earlier
figure of 50,000, are without any secure factual foundation of which we
are aware." Former abortionist and abortion campaigner Bernard
Nathanson has admitted that he deliberately deceived people about the
number of abortion deaths in the United States. The inflated figures he
cited continued to be used by abortion campaigners in spite of his
admission.
6) "Up to one in four pregnancies in Latin America end in illegal abortion"
Further to the comment on the previous point, it is worth
mentioning that, as the rate is lower in Britain, a country where
abortion is far more widely available than anywhere in Latin America,
this figure is extremely suspect.
7) "Worldwide over 70,000 women die from illegal abortions every year."
See point 5)
8) Nafis Sadik: "He [the Pope] said: 'Don't you think that the irresponsible behaviour of men is caused by women?'
Is it likely that a man who has spoken and written on the
dignity of women would make such a remark? However, instead of rigorous
questioning, Mr Bradshaw chose to ask leading questions to predictable
answers. Never, during this programme, did a single interviewee who
toed the BBC line on this subject have their claims and opinions
subjected to even the mildest of scrutiny.
The Philippines
9) "The no choice clinic"
This derogatory comment cast the clinic in an immediately
negative light before its work or ethos had been examined. Where was
the report's investigation into the alternatives being offered at this
clinic? A brief glimpse of a natural family planning chart is
symptomatic of the tokenism inherent in this programme's approach to
the other side of the argument. The fact that modern natural family
planning is as effective as the Pill, educates women about their
fertility and provides drug-free family planning (surely a bonus in a
poor country) was entirely ignored.
10) "With contraception under threat, thousands live from scavenging on rubbish tips"
This general theme of the report, that there is a direct link
between lack of contraception and poverty is made repeatedly without
ever being queried or proven. Giving a brief mention to the
understanding of poverty given by the Church (and others for that
matter) is not sufficient for an investigation of this nature. Where
are the interviews with religious and lay organisations working to
alleviate poverty in this region?
11) Dr Junice Melgar: "I think personally that John Paul's
teachings are taking a toll on people's lives here, that his admonition
against reproductive health care is actually causing deaths of women
here from unwanted pregnancy and even from pregnancy that's
complicated."
This 'opinion' is entirely specious, though yet again Mr
Bradshaw did not see fit to question it. Neither the Pope nor the
Church in general have any problem with women receiving the antenatal
and postnatal care they need. Its objection is to the destruction of
innocent life. Furthermore, the experience of the Republic of Ireland
has demonstrated that a complete ban on abortion is entirely compatible
with excellent maternal health care, including care of women with
complications in pregnancy. There were no maternal deaths at all in
Ireland in 1993, 1995 or 1997.
12) Frances Kissling: When I go to the United Nations and
watch the Vatican representatives operate right on the floor, I see
them going up to Libya, to the Sudan, to Oman, to very often to Muslim
countries that have similar conservative views on women and
reproductive and wheeling and dealing just like every other government
official in the world."
If these are intended as criticisms, what is the point
exactly? Why was she not challenged to clarify herself? Is it the fact
that the Holy See has representatives that upsets Ms Kissling? As a
point of information, it is not the Vatican city state that is
represented at the United Nations, but the Holy See, which is the
government of the Catholic Church, representing 1.6 billion Catholics
worldwide. Or is it the fact that the Holy See talks to Muslims? Mr
Bradshaw failed to question this offensive implication that Catholics
and Muslims should not work together.
Kenya, the Church and Condoms
The programme's comments in this section of the report were
particularly offensive and dishonest. The Church was accused of
'peddling rumour and superstition', preaching 'scientific nonsense',
'ignoring widely agreed scientific evidence on AIDS', 'peddling
superstition and ignorance' and making 'extraordinary claims'. Mr
Bradshaw comes within an inch of accusing the Church of mass murder,
yet none of these claims that there is a link between Church teaching
and deaths from AIDS is backed up by a single scientific study.
Anecdotal evidence and opinion constitutes seriously inadequate support
for an allegation of this nature.
The interview tactics used on Catholic bishops were
aggressive, offensive and patronising. The use of words such as
'peddling' and 'superstition' panders to old-fashioned anti-Catholic
stereotypes. Most seriously, however, the report failed to make any
mention of scientific studies that back up concerns about condom use
and went as far as to misrepresent other studies:
13) "The most authoritative recent report is by the US
National Institute of Health which concluded: 'Intact condoms are
essentially impermeable to the smallest sexually transmitted virus' and
'that the consistent use of male condoms protects against HIV/AIDS
transmissions.'"
This quote does not come from the conclusion of the report and
is not a single, condensed reference at all. It is spliced from two
different sections of the report, p. 7 and p. 27. Furthermore, Panorama
omitted to mention other key aspects of this authoritative report:
i) Even though condom use was quoted as having 'significantly
reduced the risk of HIV infection in men and women' it concluded in the
introduction to the report (p. ii) that 'because of limitations in
study designs there was insufficient evidence from the epidemiological
studies on these diseases to draw definite conclusions about the
effectiveness of the latex male condom in reducing the transmission of
these diseases.'
ii) It recorded the fallibility of any study on condom use
because 'all studies must rely on self-reported use, a potential source
of error due to recall bias' (p. 5)
iii) It recorded that 'the combined method failure (slippage plus breakage) is estimated at 1.6% - 3.6% (p. 9) and
iv) 'approximately 3% of couples who reported using condoms
consistently and correctly (considered "perfect use") are estimated to
experience an unintended pregnancy during the first year of use' and
'in a recent well-controlled randomized clinical trial of monogamous
couples using latex male condoms for contraception over six months, the
pregnancy rate during "typical use" was reported at 6.3% (p. 10).
v) Finally, 'from the two incidence estimates, consistent
condom use decreased the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately
85%. These data provide strong evidence for the effectiveness of
condoms for reducing sexually transmitted HIV.' Note 'reducing' not
'preventing'. The programme's major source of scientific information
for its premise that condoms prevent AIDS transmission admits itself
that condoms decrease risk by only 85% and goes on in its conclusion to
state: "it is important that robust research be pursued to ascertain
the true benefits and limitations of an available risk reduction
technology". Not only does this source emphasise (through that 85%
figure) that condoms are not 100% effective, Panorama accused the
archbishop of Nairobi of promoting 'scientific nonsense' simply for
making the same point.
Mr Bradshaw would have been prudent to point out that there is
not a single scientific study that states that condoms are 100%
effective in preventing the spread of HIV. Furthermore, condom
manufacturers themselves do not dare to make such a claim when the
consequences in human and legal terms are so serious. Durex state on
their website:
"Latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly are a
highly effective barrier to the sexual transmission of HIV and other
STIs." Unfortunately, as the makers of Sex and the Holy City appear not
to have been aware, 'correct and consistent use' is the ideal more
often than the reality. More interestingly, Durex goes on to point out
that the only 100% effective way of preventing HIV infection is a
method wholeheartedly endorsed and encouraged by the Church: "However,
for complete protection from HIV and other STIs, the only totally
effective measure is sexual abstinence or limiting sexual intercourse
to mutually faithful, uninfected partners."
The statement made by the Archbishop of Nairobi which Mr
Bradshaw appeared to find so difficult to believe - that condom use
encourages the spread of HIV - is backed up by a study in leading
British medical journal The Lancet: "Increased condom use will increase
the number of [HIV/AIDS] transmissions that result from condom failure"
and "a vigorous condom promotion policy could increase rather than
decrease unprotected sexual exposure if it has the unintended effect of
encouraging a greater overall level of sexual activity." 'Condoms and
seat belts: the parallels and the lessons' The Lancet, 29 Jan 2000.
Even the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)
has indicated in the past that 'the risk of contracting AIDS during
so-called "protected sex" approaches 100 percent as the number of
episodes of sexual intercourse increases.' Cates Medical Bulletin, IPPF
1997.
I look forward to your early response.
Yours faithfully,
John Smeaton
SPUC National director
