Pro-Life Times: May 2002

Parents tell Tesco 'Stay family friendly'

by Paul Tully

Families throughout the country are appealing to their local Tesco stores not to start giving the morning-after pill free to teenagers. The drug, which can cause an early abortion, is being targeted at girls as young as 13 by the NHS Trust behind the scheme. SPUC has issued a leaflet calling on Tesco to drop the policy after the distribution to teenagers was launched at the in-store pharmacies of Tesco supermarkets in north Somerset. Concerned families are now urging both their local store managers and Tesco's chief executive not to pursue this policy. "The really worrying aspect of this is that teenagers are able to get the morning-after pill, free of charge without their parents or their GP knowing. It's impossible for pharmacists to keep a reliable check on who gets the pill - or how often," said Mrs Teresa Burbidge from Wallington in Surrey, mother of 3 teenage children.

She continued, "Like many other families, we don't want our local supermarket to become a place where the welfare of our teenage children is at risk."

John Smeaton, national director of SPUC said, "If enough parents and grandparents make their views known, we can influence Tesco not to repeat this in their other stores. Tesco's customers have not been consulted about this controversial approach. There is no evidence to show that giving teenagers these pills either reduces unwanted pregnancies or the number of surgical abortions among that age group." A spokesperson for Tesco said, "We were approached by the north Somerset NHS Trust to take part in a Government scheme to prevent unwanted preganancies. This is not our initiative, but I can't say this will not happen in other stores."

Stop press

SPUC chief and Pro-Life Times editor John Smeaton vowed that the campaign against the morning-after pill would continue despite a setback in the High Court in April, when SPUC's challenge to the sale of the drug through pharmacies was rejected.

"None of the morning-after pill supporters in court - the drug company, the pro-abortion lobby, the department of health - could deny that the drug kills early developing embryos. In other words it is an abortion-inducing drug. SPUC is urgently considering its legal options and will not let the matter rest," he said.

Comment

Anne Fearon is a mother of six children including two sets of twins. She is the secretary of SPUC's Crosby branch, Liverpool diocesan organiser for SPUC's annual white flower appeal and a Merseyside regional delegate on SPUC's National Council. For the last 10 years she has been the north west co-ordinator for the Association of Catholic Women.

It came as a shock to me when, visiting the doctor for the results of my first pregnancy test eighteen years ago, he said, "The result is positive. Do you want the baby?" Several doctors later and now with six lovely children, I am less easily shocked. Anti-child, anti-family attitudes have become so absorbed into our society that children are seen as commodities, at times an inconvenience, and large families are frowned upon by many.

I count my blessings and thank God every day for my children. We think of ourselves as an "SPUC family", and my children have learnt to respect human life from conception to natural death. From quite an early age they started to make decisions based on their understanding of life issues and the effect they can have on others. Coming home from school, one of my children, aged about five at the time, asked me, "How are we with the NSPCC? We're having a collection in school. Should we take money in?"

It is not always easy for children in an SPUC family. As they get older, it becomes quite a responsibility for them, knowing and understanding as much as they do. In discussions with their peers, they can often be the odd one out. It is hard for them when their friends expect them to give the pro-life point of view on any topic of conversation. But as far as I can tell, they do speak up for the pro-life cause, because, like their parents, they find it even harder to keep quiet!

Heavenly Father send Your Holy Spirit to renew our love. Watch over the stirrings of life in the womb and bring it to fruition. May it suffer no untimely birth at nature's whim nor violence at our hands. Let every human life show forth the Creator's love and strengthen the human family. Made in your image, let each person thrive and come to fullness in due time. We make this prayer through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

Government reveals link with euthanasia lobby

by Anthony Ozimic

It has been revealed that the government has been working with the pro-euthanasia lobby in launching a consultation on treatment for incapacitated patients.

Paul Tully of SPUC commented: "The government has thanked the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VES) for its assistance in the consultation process, and recommends the VES as a 'source of help on consent for treatment', such as living wills. This involvement with the VES raises the concern that the government is doing a U-turn on euthanasia and will soon bring in legislation designed to permit the killing of elderly people and the disabled."

"If the government is really against euthanasia as it claims, it should explain why it is sending people for advice to an organisation that wants to legalise killing", Mr Tully concluded.

In a move which could endanger the lives of vulnerable patients, the draft guidance proposed by the government's consultation endorses so-called living wills and claims that advance refusals of treatment contained in living wills are binding on doctors.

The consultation, which ends in July, aims to "set...the scene for new legislation" and give "guidance [which] will evolve over time, to reflect future changes in law and policy affecting people who lack capacity." Information on making submissions to the consultation is available from SPUC.

Family planning makes no difference to teen pregnancies

by Staff reporter

A new study shows that giving girls under sixteen family planning advice makes very little difference to conception rates. Dr David Paton of the University of Nottingham Business School found that giving girls under the age of sixteen family planning information made no significant impact on decreasing the number of conceptions and that there was some evidence that it actually increased conceptions. The current government's policy of trying to decrease teenage pregancies by increasing access and the availability of family planning services, including the morning-after pill, 'is a failed policy,' said Dr Paton. "It appears that if people have access to family planning advice they think they automatically have a lower risk of pregnancy.

Commenting on why the Government's teenage preganancy policy is not working, Dr Paton said, "Basically you are sending out mixed messages. On the one hand, sex under the age of sixteen is illegal; on the other hand, you are giving information which says, 'Well if you are going to do it, here's how you go about it.' "

Turning science on its head

by John Smeaton, National Director, SPUC

The high court has rejected SPUC's claim that prescription-free sale of abortion-inducing morning-after pills in pharmacies throughout the UK is unlawful. To reach this conclusion, the judge turned science on its head, and re-defined pregnancy as starting six days later than everybody thought, including the world's most respected medical and scientific text books.

His judgement is not the last word on the matter because, bluntly, it's nonsense. It literally makes no sense for a judge to employ plainly false scientific arguments in order to reach the "desired" social conclusion. SPUC and our thousands of supporters throughout the country will not be leaving the matter there.

The key law in Britain which provides protection for unborn children is the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act which made it a criminal offence to procure a miscarriage. SPUC felt duty bound to seek to stop the unlawful killing of human embryos by means of morning-after pills by appealing to have that law upheld.

We are still duty-bound to protect human lives unjustly destroyed by morning-after pills. That is why I intend, at the end of June, to undertake a 9-day water-only fast to raise funds for our campaign which will be continued in every way open to us. SPUC will continue to appeal to the court of public opinion which so strongly opposes the way morning-after pills are being promoted, particularly amongst young teenagers without parental knowledge or consent. Tesco is giving out abortion inducing morning-after pills free, under a policy aimed at girls as young as thirteen. Parliament has authorised government policy whereby children as young as 11 can be given morning-after pills at school. And teenagers, including those under 16, are obtaining abortion-inducing drugs in pharmacies without their parents and even their doctors knowing anything about it.

Decades of experience worldwide show that this is a recipe for higher teenage pregnancy rates, higher rates of abortion and higher rates of sexually-transmitted diseases.

Please give your support to my 9-day water-only fast, either by taking part for a shorter period yourself, or by collecting sponsors. Contact me at SPUC for more information about my fast and about our continuing educational and politico/legal campaign against the abortion-inducing morning-after pill.

News In Brief

BELGIUM - The Belgian Free University intends to teach medical students to perform euthanasia. A law to legalise euthanasia which was passed by the Belgian senate last October is expected to be approved by the lower house of parliament later this year.(Ananova)

SWITZERLAND - A referendum on whether to legalise abortion in the first three months of pregnancy will be held on 2 June. While abortion is officially illegal in Switzerland, it is already tolerated and there are thought to be between 12,000 and 13,000 abortions carried out each year. The referendum proposals face strong opposition from a number of Swiss political parties and religious groups. (NZZ)

FRANCE - A prominent French pro-life leader has been shot dead during a city council meeting in Nanterre, near Paris. Mr Michel Raoult, leader and founder of Choisir la Vie, was a member of Nanterre's city council and was killed together with seven others when a gunman went on the rampage. (BBC / SPUC)

NEPAL - Legislators have passed a law to legalise abortion on demand up to the 12th week of pregnancy as long as the husband gives his consent, and up to the 18th week of pregnancy in cases of rape or incest. Nepal's lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly to overturn a vote in the upper house to reject the new law. (LifeSite)

PORTUGAL - The newly elected government opposes the introduction of permissive abortion legislation. The centre-right Social Democrats emerged as the largest party after the general election in March, displacing the ruling Socialists. Portugal's Socialist president, Jorge Sampaio, is known to be in favour of liberalising abortion law. (BBC / The Guardian)

Our right to be heard

by Antonia Tully

Ever since the pro-life movement began working to protect vulnerable human lives in this country, it has had few friends in the national media and even fewer in the BBC. In March of this year, however, the Pro-Life Alliance won a significant victory in the Court of Appeal which ruled that the BBC was wrong to censor an election broadcast which showed the development of an unborn baby and images of an aborted baby.

The Pro-Life Alliance is a political party, founded in 1996, to run pro-life candidates in constituencies where none of the mainstream candidates were pro-life. This initiative did not aim to cut across the extensive, door-to-door general election campaign which SPUC has run, to great effect, over the last thirty years.

A shared aim of both SPUC and the Pro-Life Alliance is to bring pro-life issues into the minds of voters at election times. A major aspect of the Pro-Life Alliance campaign was the opportunity to get some pro-life footage broadcast on national television. In the 1997 General Election, the party ran 50 candidates across the country and sent its hard-hitting election broadcast to the BBC. Two days before the election broadcast was scheduled the BBC decided not to show it on the grounds that it offended against "taste and decency".

What the BBC could not stomach was 1 minute 40 seconds of images of the baby's development from conception onwards, interspersed with captions showing how many babies of that age are aborted. This was followed by 1 minute 20 seconds of video images of aborted babies, mainly 2nd and 3rd trimester. The broadcast concluded with the caption "Some choices are wrong".

The leader of the Pro-Life Alliance, Bruno Quintavalle, admits that the film was fairly brutal, but says that the intention was to leave the public under no illusions as to what happens when a baby is aborted. In the event the election broadcast went out with all the images blurred to non-recognition and a caption superimposed stating that the broadcast had been censored.

The Pro-Life Alliance then rushed straight to the Court of Appeal, where an appeal was lodged against the BBC's decision with the purpose of getting the issue resolved in time for the next election. This was unsuccessful as was a subsequent application to the European Court of Human Rights.

However, come the general election 2001 the Pro-Life Alliance decided once more to try to get their election broadcast shown on television, but again ran into difficulties with the BBC. This time they had a new film which focused on 1st trimester babies, being more representative of the majority of abortions that are performed in this country. Photographs and video images of live and aborted babies during the first three months of life were interspersed with extracts from the Human Rights Act. The final caption read "Be serious about human rights".

The BBC found this election broadcast unacceptable, without, it seems, being able to tell the Pro-Life Alliance exactly what they did not like. Then began a frantic race against time with the Pro-Life Alliance making costly and time-consuming amendments to the film, blurring what they thought the BBC did not want to see. In the end the BBC rejected three versions of the film and a fourth was broadcast without any images at all. So back went the Pro-Life Alliance to the Court of Appeal.

Finally, on 14 March 2002, three senior judges ruled that the BBC's decision to censor the film was "unlawful". Lord Justice Simon Brown said, "To campaign for the prohibition of abortion is a legitimate political programme. The pictures are in a real sense the message. Words alone cannot convey (particularly to the less verbally adept) the essential character of the foetus and the nature of its destruction by abortion. This video provides truthful, factual and, it is right to say, an unsensational account of the process."

In summing up Lord Justice Laws said, "...I have used the word "censorship" from the first ...I have well in mind that the broadcasters do not at all accept that their decision should be so categorised. Maybe the feathers of their liberal credentials are ruffled at the word's overtones; maybe there is an implicit plea for the comfort of a euphemism." The BBC were quick to reject any suggestion that their decision to censor the broadcast was due to their own agenda on the issue of abortion. In a radio interview Ann Sloman, the BBC's chief political advisor, said, "This has absolutely nothing to do with the personal views of any single person involved in the decision. ... There is no 'liberal elite' ". The BBC plans to take the case to the House of Lords although, in the light of the resounding judgement against the BBC Bruno Quintavalle said he would be "incredibly surprised" to see it reversed.

From the desk of Joanna Bogle

Bogus group

Alas, the bogus group Catholics for a Free Choice (CFC), who campaign for abortion rights, will be attempting to cause trouble this summer when a massive international gathering of young people takes place in Toronto, Canada. CFC plans a poster campaign aimed at the young Christians who are arriving for a week of prayer, talks and music. The American RC bishops have issued a statement emphasising that CFC is not a bona fide Catholic group - it has been working with groups promoting abortion as "a woman's right to choose" and lobbies a great deal at the United Nations. Catholics for a Free Choice is promoted in Britain by the Catholic Women's Network, which is, in turn, a member of the official National Board of Catholic Women. Will the Board now distance itself from CFC and from the group which promotes its message here?

Europe Dying

Back in the 70s, we were often told that one of the greatest dangers facing mankind was over-population. The problem is that the world is actually in grave danger of under-population. In Europe we are dying: not enough young people are being born to sustain our nations, and all our systems - pensions, taxation and social welfare will be rendered null through lack of human resources. A new paperback "Prophets and Priests" by Ann Farmer (St. Austin Press, 296 Brockley Road, London SE4 2RA) traces the history of all this and gives a powerful voice to those who seek an end to coercive programmes of contraception and abortion worldwide. Packed with facts and footnotes, it's hugely readable and carries a crucial message.

Taking up the pro-life baton

It is exciting, and rather moving, to see how the younger generation is taking up the baton of leadership in pro-life work. I was thrilled to accompany my husband when he was a guest speaker at the SPUC Youth and Student Conference in the lovely setting of Courtfield near Ross-on-Wye on the English-Welsh boarder. What a delight to meet so many enthusiastic and concerned young people.

And in politics

Remember James Mawdesley, the young man who was imprisoned in Burma for speaking up for human rights there? Now free and active back home in Britain, he's planning a career in politics. He has firm pro-life views and at a recent gathering it was good to see him swapping ideas and information with Peter Garrett of LIFE (also planning to stand for Parliament) and pro-life member of the House of Lords, David Alton. As we look to the future, I'm encouraged.

Challenge to China by parliamentary committee

by a Staff reporter

A major parliamentary committee has challenged both China and Britain to address China's notorious system of coercive population control. As a direct result of lobbying by SPUC, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has called for the subject of China's one-child policy to be part of "a high-level critical dialogue on human rights issues between China and the United Kingdom and its EU partners". The committee also called upon the British government to record "the human rights abuses which have occurred as a result of China's population control programme - coercive fertility control" in future annual reports on human rights. Anthony Ozimic, SPUC's political spokesman, commented: "We are very pleased at this recognition that working against China's policy of state-mandated forced abortions should be a priority for our relations with China. The British government has so far neglected to pressure China to abolish the one-child policy, so we will be calling upon the government to accept the committee's recommendations.".Mr Ozimic continued: "This is significant because the British government has been accepting bland denials from Chinese officials about the inhumane effects of their one child policy."

George Bush rejects all cloning

by Dominic Baster

US President George W Bush has insisted that it would be unethical to make a distinction between cloning for reproductive purposes and cloning for research - also known as therapeutic cloning.

In contrast to the stance of the British government, President Bush has given his wholehearted support to a comprehensive ban on human cloning. He urged members of the US Senate to pass a ban on cloning which has already been passed by the US House of Representatives, and stressed that "life is a creation, not a commodity".

The President reminded his listeners that ethical adult stem cell technology had great potential, but made it clear that so-called therapeutic cloning would be wrong in any case because "we must always preserve human dignity". He continued: "As we seek what is possible, we must always ask what is right, and we must never forget that even the most noble ends do not justify any means."

The UK parliament has voted to authorise destructive research on cloned embryos, while banning the implantation of a cloned embryo inside a woman. President Bush's clear rejection of this distinction was echoed by the European parliament in 2000 when it passed a resolution condemning the British Government's "linguistic sleight of hand to erode the moral significance of human cloning".

Australian PM gives in to embryo research

by Dominic Baster

John Howard, the Australian prime minister, has disappointed pro-lifers by supporting destructive embryo research on surplus test-tube babies. Mr Howard was expected to recommend a complete ban on stem cell research involving the destruction of embryos. But a day before the leaders of all the country's states and territories met to decide on a national policy, the prime minister wrote to them proposing the authorisation of destructive research. Next day, the leaders broadly endorsed his proposals.

The prime minister, who was under intense pressure from the scientific lobby, appears to have attempted a damage limitation strategy. Under the plan, all human cloning will be banned, and for three years destructive research can only be undertaken on those embryos already in storage, with parental permission.

The proposals were hailed by Peter Beattie, the state premier of Queensland as "frankly, a great day for Australia". However pro-lifers have condemned the move. Dr John Fleming, Director of South Australia's Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, said, "The deliberate destruction of embryonic human beings to extract their stem cells is an affront to human dignity. While I welcome the ban on cloning as well as the ban on deliberate creation of embryos for destructive research, it is difficult to see how, having crossed the moral line that says you shall not kill innocent human beings, we can ultimately prevent the creation of new embryonic human beings for destructive purposes."