JOHN SMEATON, DIRECTOR OF SPUC: Giving counselling or taking lives?

Monday, 10 March 2008

Giving counselling or taking lives?

Marie Stopes, the abortion provider, has launched a so-called telephone counselling service for women considering an abortion. SPUC's Anthony Ozimic has commented: "Marie Stopes has a financial interest in abortion - they run abortion clinics. What incentive is there for abortion providers like Marie Stopes to give women the necessary information about abortion, such as the full facts about the development of their baby and the physical and psychological risks of abortion to themselves? Women should be extremely wary of speaking to counsellors who are employed by an agency that exists to kill unborn children. Marie Stopes, the birth control pioneer, was driven by the desire to ensure that women she saw as 'unfit' should have fewer children. Her ideas live on in the agency that names itself after her and they are certainly not fit to give advice to today's expectant mothers."

About Me

I became involved in SPUC after graduating, when I established a branch in south London in 1974. I have worked full-time for SPUC for 42 years. I became chief executive of SPUC in the UK in 1996, having been general secretary since 1978. I was elected vice-president of International Right to Life Federation in 2005. At UN conferences in Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, Istanbul and Rome, I helped coordinate more than 150 pro-life/pro-family groups resulting in pro-life victories in Cairo, Istanbul and Rome. I was educated at Salesian College, London, before going to Oxford where I graduated in English Language and Literature. I qualified as a teacher, becoming head of English at a secondary school. I am married to Josephine. We have a grown-up family and we live in north London.