JOHN SMEATON, DIRECTOR OF SPUC: BBC Children in Need's record on pro-life issues

Thursday, 31 October 2013

BBC Children in Need's record on pro-life issues

Top story:

BBC Children in Need's record on pro-life issues
BBC Children in Need is a charity of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to raise money for the support of children, including disabled children. Its main fundraising vehicle is an annual telethon held in November. The BBC Children in Need website reveals that in 2012 and 2013 it made grants to sexual health centres and projects supporting homosexual youth. In SPUC's experience, such centres and projects often support and/or facilitate legal abortion, abortifacient birth control and/or damaging forms of sex education. For example, BBC Children in Need gave £30,803 to the Terrence Higgins Trust, which has endorsed a right to choose abortion, promoted morning-after pills, produced pro-euthanasia advance directives ('living wills') and produced highly-explicit sex education material. [John Smeaton, 12 November 2011] BBC Children In Need has previously given grants to charities funding abortion and family planning services and using research methods that involve destructive embryos - see the entry in the 2006 edition of SPUC's Charities Bulletin.

Other stories:

Abortion

Cheating boyfriend jailed for trying to abort his unborn child by giving his pregnant partner miscarriage-inducing drugs [Mail, 30 October]
Ecuador: abortion will not be decriminalised in the new penal Code [Pat Buckley, 30 October]
Founder of racy magazines says fatherhood made him pro-life [LifeSiteNews.com, 30 October]

Euthanasia

UK's top court allows hospital to stop treatment for terminal man despite family's opposition [Associated Press, 30 October]
Lord Falconer reveals that his ‘Assisted Dying Bill’ effectively places doctors above the law [Peter Saunders, 30 October]

Sexual ethics

New Zealand campaigners worried about sex education for five year-olds [Scoop, 31 October]

General

The urgency of Maternal Transfers [MaterCare International, 31 October]
Babies remember music they heard in the womb up to four months after they are born [Mail, 30 October]
Parents find greatest fulfillment from raising children, Pew poll confirms [LifeSiteNews.com, 25 October]

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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.