Day 4: One Every Three Minutes Campaign

Dear Friend and Supporter

On Monday, I wrote to you about the two biggest threats to human life in Britain today:

• Total decriminalisation of abortion in England, Wales and Scotland

• DIY abortions pills being placed on a permanent footing post lockdown.

I pointed out that both of these threats must be stopped because their (so far) limited and temporary introduction is fuelling the biggest rise in abortions ever seen in this country.

I said that abortion now kills one unborn child “every three minutes”.

Of course, when I say ‘human life’, I mean human life in utero.

It is sad to reflect that the most dangerous place a person will ever find themselves in over the course of their lifetime is their mother’s womb—a place nature intended to be the safest.

One-in-four of us now die there, making abortion more deadly in the UK than cancer.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the colossal scale on which our opponents are now killing babies would be more than enough to satisfy them.

Or that, Heaven forbid, should they ever attain their stated goal of abortion up-to-birth for any reason whatever, this would be the limit to their ghastly attacks on the unborn.

But you would be dead wrong.

This is what the people who run the abortion industry REALLY believe:

British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) chief executive, Ann Furedi, has openly stated that the wishes of the woman trump any consideration of the baby’s life, however developed it may be.

Whilst speaking on Premier Christian Radio in 2019, Mrs Furedi openly advocated abortion being legally available at any stage of pregnancy up to birth.
 
Describing late-term abortion, Ann Furedi said:
 
“It is horrible. You look at the remains following a late-term abortion, and it is grim. But it’s completely put into a different light by the conversations…about why the women…are going through that procedure."

Furedi admitted that, nevertheless, she "struggles" to see how late-term abortion is morally any different to killing a baby after birth:

"…from the foetal perspective, nothing changes [during birth], it's just a matter of geography.” 

The only reason infanticide is different, she said, is that a mother does not have to look after a baby post-birth.

“After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?”

This is the title of the 2013 academic paper co-authored by Alberto Giubilini & Francesca Minerva and published in the mainstream British Medical Journal.

The paper seeks to normalise infanticide, or what the authors euphemistically term, "after-birth abortion".

This seminal writing holds that both unborn children and new-borns are morally equivalent, so should be accorded the same rights.

Yet, Giubilini and Minerva maintain that both unborn and new-born babies are too young to be recognised as deserving of a moral right not be killed (as they lack ‘personhood’).

Giubilini and Minerva touch on the irrationality of the conventional pro-abortion position.

This holds that unborn and new-born babies are to be afforded different rights based on their environment (whether situated in utero or born) and a false understanding of personhood (that new-borns suddenly possess the faculties which an unborn child seconds earlier supposedly lacked).

“We do not claim that after-birth abortions are good alternatives to abortion. Abortions at an early stage are the best option, for both psychological and physical reasons.

“However, if a disease has not been detected during the pregnancy, if something went wrong during the delivery, or if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford”.

In other words, a young child can be killed for whatever reason you like, which is precisely what so-called “pro-choice” advocates claim should happen if the mother classifies her unborn child as a "burden".
 
Who pays the price?

Apart from the child, of course, and the mother who has procured the death of her new-born child and who must live with that frightful choice, spare a thought for the medical professionals who could be pressured to carry out the act of infanticide, whether they want to or not.

The United Nations 2018 Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Report on Northern Ireland includes a recommendation which specifically targets pro-life medical staff.

That recommendation has since been “cut & pasted” into the Province’s new abortion framework laid out in Section 9 of the Northern Ireland Act 2019.

The government there is now legally bound to:

• Ensure “affordability and accessibility” for sexual health services at hospitals, clinics and pharmacies.

Doctors, nurses, chemists, even administrative staff in Northern Ireland wishing to exercise their right to conscientious objection by refusing to participate in abortions, or dole out abortion-inducing pills, face immense difficulties today.

Whilst the CEDAW recommendations currently apply to Northern Ireland only, it would be naive to think that our opponents do not harbour plans to export this radical abortion framework to the rest of the UK, lock, stock and barrel.

This is why SPUC’s “Repeal Section 9” campaign in Northern Ireland is so critical.

And although the CEDAW Report makes no mention of infanticide per se, it nonetheless makes it clear how medical professionals are expected to act regarding requests for legally sanctioned killing.

Should infanticide be legalised, it is difficult to see why anything would change. 

After all, as Ann Furedi (pictured right, below) correctly asserts, infanticide is just a matter of “geography”.

“Women’s rights” will always trump a medic’s conscientious objection rights

Indeed, a devasting legal precedent to that effect was established by the UK Supreme Court in 2014.

In that case the court handed down a landmark ruling which ended the longstanding protection afforded to senior midwives under the conscience clause of the Abortion Act.

The Supreme Court hearing was the culmination of a 7-year long legal battle by the Glasgow midwives Connie Wood (l) and Mary Doogan (r) who were backed and funded by SPUC supporters.
















Following the ruling, Connie and Mary, who between them had delivered more than 10,000 babies for the NHS, were left with no other choice than to resign from the job that they loved.

Our opponents know that if they can get the medical profession to go along with their killing agenda, victory for them is assured.

That is why we can never abandon pro-life doctors, nurses, midwives and chemists.

We must stand with them and fight against the abhorrently unjust laws and rulings which seek to involve medics in the killing of innocent children whether they are willing to or not.

And that is why I must ask you today for your help in repealing Section 9 of the Northern Ireland and SPUC’s other work which defends life and conscience.

If we do not tackle this type of radical abortion psychopathy head on then infanticide could be very much on the cards.

"Thank you" to every single SPUC supporter who helped get the One Every Three Minutes fundraising campaign off to such a strong start this week.

If you've not got involved yet but would like to, here’s how you can help:

• Send a donation today (even just £10 or a monthly gift of £5 will make a difference)

• Tell a pro-life friend or family member about the threat of infanticide and encourage them to get involved in this fight too

By raising more funds, SPUC can do more to stop the abortion lobby in its ruthless and determined efforts to

• secure permanent status for DIY abortions after lockdown is lifted

• strike down the conscience rights of pro-life doctors and nurses

• enshrine abortion (and perhaps even infanticide) as a human right in international law with the help of authoritative United Nation reports

An unborn baby is killed by abortion every three minutes, and this must STOP.

Your help is desperately needed to eradicate the scourge of abortion from our nation.

We simply cannot win this cruel war on our babies without your involvement.

Please get involved TODAY, at whatever level you can afford to give.

Thank you for your great love and concern for unborn children.

Yours in defence of life

John Smeaton
Chief Executive