JOHN SMEATON, DIRECTOR OF SPUC: Eugenics

Thursday 26 June 2008

Child abandonment: legal analysis of pro-abortion agenda behind Council of Europe motion

As I blogged recently, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will debate tomorrow a draft resolution on the subject of child abandonment. The draft resolution contains a clear promotion of abortion. Please contact your country's representatives in the Assembly immediately - see my 20 June blog for more information. The UK members of the Assembly can all be emailed via one email address coepa.del@parliament.uk Simply send a separate, individually-addressed email for each UK member.

The European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ) has published a comprehensive legal analysis of the pro-abortion agenda which has been inserted into the draft resolution. The ECLJ has condemned the draft resolution's:

"utilitarian calculus promoting abortion over life as a result of being born into inadequate social and financial circumstances. As social and financial circumstances are changeable and the termination of pregnancy irreparable, it is institutionally unacceptable for the Parliamentary Assembly to promote such a worldview with its underlying shadow of social eugenics."

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.