Allowing abortion
providers to advertise their ‘services’ on TV means treating abortion as
though it is any other 'service', even though this purportedly medical
service is, in fact, nearly always performed for social reasons and is
not a normal service.
Such advertising
will be socially harmful, not least because it has “the effect of
normalising the treatment of children as wanted or unwanted products”.
While abortion providers offer little or no
practical help to women who choose not to have an abortion, and in a
number of cases campaign for an extreme liberalisation of current
abortion laws, those organisations which refuse to refer for abortion
and which do offer genuine practical assistance to pregnant women are
not benefitted in any way, while abortion-providers are.
Of the requirement that any PCAS services must
state if they do not refer for abortion, SPUC has noted that those
organisations which are not directly or indirectly part of the abortion
industry will be singled out as “the assumption [of the BCAP
Consultation] is that abortion is so normal a procedure that those
groups wishing to assist women in bringing their babies to term are
required to warn women explicitly that they will not ‘assist’ them in
doing the reverse. Such a requirement would not be made of other
counsellors.”
BCAP have returned in
their quest to weaken restrictions on abortion advertising. Their
latest consultation discriminates against prolife charities and seeks to
treat abortion as no different from any other commercial service.
Allowing such advertising will further betray women who have already
been let down by our society.
Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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