Abortion: Truth in Advertising

Gerald Warner at his Daily Telegraph blog has a very interesting take on what the pro-life movement in Britain should do now that the powers that be have decided to allow advertisements for abortions to run on TV.

Tonight’s scheduled screening of an advertisement for abortion on Channel 4 by the Marie Stopes organisation marks a new low in moral sensitivity. More significantly, it removes the last argument against pro-life organisations being allowed to broadcast images demonstrating the realities of abortion. The pro-abortion lobby is pleading the need for openness about abortion: fair enough, they should be taken at their word.

Dana Hovig, chief executive of Marie Stopes, said: “We hope the new ‘Are you late’ campaign will encourage people to talk about their choices, including abortion, more openly and honestly…” Julie Douglas, marketing manager of Marie Stopes, explained: “We thought it was right to bring abortion out into the open… It doesn’t help to keep it under wraps.” In that case, why is the word “abortion” not mentioned in the advertisement?

Since the pro-abortion lobby wants the practice brought out into the open, presumably it will have no objection to the Pro-Life Alliance broadcasting real-life images of what happens to a child being aborted. The Alliance’s factual election broadcasts have repeatedly been censored by the television companies. After the censoring of its 2001 election broadcast, the Alliance won a temporary victory against the BBC in the Court of Appeal in 2002.

On that occasion Lord Justice Laws stated: “The reader of this judgement will see that I have used the word ‘censorship’ from the first sentence. 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 the implicit plea for the comfort of a euphemism. However in my judgement this court must, and I hope the broadcasters, recognise unblinking that censorship is exactly what this case is about.”

. . . snip . . .

Since the legalisation of abortion in 1967, more than 7 million British babies have been aborted. Clearly, Marie Stopes does not think that is a high enough figure and wants to facilitate its increase. Of abortions in this country, more than 98 per cent are performed for “social reasons”, the euphemism for abortion on demand.

Now that Marie Stopes is advertising, in an obvious attempt to attract more consumers, it is only reasonable that its product should be subjected to the same scrutiny as any other advertised service. Consumers have a right to know exactly what they are being offered. So, let the Pro-Life Alliance broadcast films of the realities of abortion, including the severed limbs and heads of very recognisably tiny children. The “good taste” argument is totally inadequate to counter the self-evident public-interest issue at stake here and, as an eminent judge pointed out, the unacceptability of political censorship by broadcasters.

Read it all here. My hunch is that if abortions were shown on television, we could have abortion banned in a year. Denial, ignorance and closing one's eyes to scientific truth are what the pro-abortion movement is built on.