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New Year Fundraising Appeal - Day 8
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Dear Pro-life Friend,
Any strategist will tell you that planning for success begins with honestly assessing the size of the problem that you face.
And I don’t for a moment deny that the scale of the problems we face in 2022 is gigantic.
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1. The numbers involved are shocking
The undeniable truth is that abortion has become part of the fabric of British life. With 1-in-4 pregnancies now ending in abortion, few families in the UK remain untouched by it.
Since the Abortion Act came into force in 1968, a staggering 9,814,980 unborn babies’ lives have been snatched away by legal abortion in the UK.
Indeed, the tragedy unfolding before us is unmatched in human history. According to WHO, an estimated 40-50 million abortions are taking place in the world every single year.
This corresponds to approximately 125,000 abortions every single day.
(A sobering thought: with less than two weeks of this year gone, already more than 1 million unborn babies will have been killed by abortion worldwide.)
To give you some idea of the scale of death involved with abortion, it is estimated that 55 million people were killed during the World War Two conflict stretching from 1939-45.
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That means almost as many babies perish each year around the world from abortion as there were victims in the whole of WW2, the bloodiest conflict in the history of mankind.
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2. Our opponents out-spend the pro-life side by ratios of hundreds, if not thousands, to one.
The Chief Executive of the global abortion provider Marie Stopes International (MSI), Simon Cooke, was paid an obscene £434,000 in 2018. (According to The Times, the amount paid to Cooke in 2018, ranked him amongst the UK’s top five best paid “charity” executives.)
In the MSI 2018 accounts, Cooke appears to attempt to justify his outrageous income. The statement declared that in 2018 the abortion provider was able to “serve more women and girls than ever before” – and this in a year in which his organisation killed 4.8 million unborn children.
The MSI accounts reveal that in 2018, the abortion giant had a record income of £296.8 million, whilst its single biggest donor was the UK Department for International Development, which paid £48 million of your taxpayer money to the abortion provider.
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3. The harm done to women’s health by the abortion industry doesn’t bear thinking about – the attitude towards women’s safety is appalling
In 2016, a Care Quality Commission (CQC) health watchdog report exposed a catalogue of abuses and safety failings at Marie Stopes clinics in the UK, including:
- Paying staff financial bonuses for encouraging abortion
- Leaving aborted children to rot in open bins
- A follow-up report stated that across a three-month period, Marie Stopes had sent 11 British women to hospital
MSI isn’t the only abortion provider with a cavalier attitude towards women’s safety to fall foul of the CQC.
Another multiple offender is BPAS, the UK’s biggest killer of unborn children:
- BPAS’s Streatham, London clinic was the subject of a CQC report published in 2019, which demanded improvement on safety, effectiveness, and responsiveness.
- In November 2021, BPAS abortion clinics in Merseyside, Doncaster and Middlesbrough were put into special measures and served with enforcement notices after the CQC gave them “inadequate” ratings for failing to provide safety to women
All three BPAS clinics were given six months to enforce proper safety measures or have their operating licences revoked.
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KEY OBJECTIVES FOR 2022
Please take a moment to carefully read SPUC’s THREE key strategic objectives (below), as they lie at the heart of the Society’s pro-life Action Plan for 2022.
OBJECTIVE ONE: Protect pro-life speech
Universities are becoming “no go” zones for pro-life students. This autumn pro-life students at Exeter and Oxford universities encountered physical violence and even death threats.
While our opponents want to silence the pro-life message on campuses, SPUC supports protections for pro-life students in the Freedom of Speech Bill currently before Parliament.
ACTION:
- Promote Pro-Life Speech Petition in support our brave pro-life young people.
Estimated expenditure: £20,000
OBJECTIVE TWO: De-rail the euthanasia lobby’s plans to change the law
The threat of assisted suicide legalisation in Britain has never been greater.
At its annual meeting in September, the UK’s largest doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, dropped its opposition to assisted suicide and euthanasia and adopted a “neutral” stance.
(When the Canadian Medical Association switched its stance to one of “neutrality” in 2014, it was seen as pivotal in opening the way for the introduction of Canada’s MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) law that saw euthanasia legalised in 2016.)
- In the past year or so, New Zealand and Spain have legalised euthanasia and assisted suicide respectively.
- Closer to home, Jersey is poised to become the first British jurisdiction to permit assisted suicide after its parliament backed a proposition on the issue by 36 votes to 10 in November.
The biggest threat, though, comes from MSP Liam McArthur’s proposed Assisted Suicide Bill in Scotland. With the consultation process now closed, SPUC is planning to mount a major campaign to urge the public to lobby MSPs.
ACTION
- Mobilise SPUC’s growing nationwide network of grassroots branches and activists, and brief media and politicians
Estimated expenditure: £30,000
OBJECTIVE THREE: Raise awareness of the harm abortion is doing to women
Women are not being told about the serious risks involved with abortion. Use of medical abortions (abortion pills) has doubled since 2010 and now account for over 85% of all UK abortions.
But a Finnish study of 42,600 patients found that abortion pills lead to as many as FOUR times more serious complications than surgical abortions.
And taking abortion pills unsupervised – as with “at home” DIY abortions - is dangerous. Even obstetrician and abortion campaigner, Peter Boylan, has admitted to “…very, very serious consequences for women” who haemorrhage at home.
Coercion is an enormous problem too. A World Health Organisation multi-country study found that women with a history of domestic abuse were almost three times more at risk of abortion.
ACTION
- Extend SPUC’s existing campaign to stop DIY home abortions
- Commission top-level academic research highlighting the scale of abortion coercion
- Launch NEW campaign to protect women and babies from coercive abortion
Estimated expenditure: £81,000
OBJECTIVE FOUR: Extend pro-life outreach – especially to the young
Winning the hearts and minds of young people is one battle that we simply must win. In 2021, SPUC invested more than £200,000 to reach under 35s.
In 2022, we will be building on this with three key projects:
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ACTION
- “Life Voice”: A brand-new educational initiative for schools comprising a pro-life drama performance from a professional acting company, workshop session and lesson plans
Estimated expenditure: £30,000
- Youth Conference: Takes place in Stone, Staffordshire in February. The event, now in its 14th year, brings together hundreds of young people from around the world to learn and develop skills that will help them spread the pro-life message
Estimated expenditure: £23,000
- Pro-life Missions: A team of SPUC staff will be travelling the country to deliver a full week of pro-life presentations and events for the public, schools, and faith leaders. Seven such missions are scheduled for 2022.
Estimated expenditure: £10,000
Total expenditure for these special strategic projects in 2022: £63,000
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YOU hold the Key
This sum is over and above the funding required to keep SPUC’s day-to-day projects and campaigns up and running, which last year came to £2.4M.
A staggering £23,308 of SPUC’s £101K New Year Appeal target has been raised to date.
Thank you!
Your kindness and love for unborn children are remarkable.
Another £77,692 would see SPUC reach its fundraising goal and ensure that ALL key objectives listed above are fully implemented.
If you have not already done so, will you help us protect our babies?
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No gift is ever too small.
The size of contribution isn’t important. It’s getting involved in this most necessary of battles that matters.
A one-off gift of £10, £20, or £50 or more registers a vote for life in a world that cares so little.
With YOUR support, anything is possible.
A donation – even one of £10 – could begin to swing things our way and help SPUC pull off a remarkable breakthrough for the pro-life movement in 2022.
If you can afford to commit £5, £10 or £20 a month, that is a great tribute to the unique and irreplaceable value of our babies who are being sacrificed at the altar of “choice” every single day in our country.
Larger gifts of £100, £500 and £1,000, of course can do more, and I know sometimes circumstances permit gifts of this size which can lead to major breakthroughs.
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Thank you for your great love and commitment to unborn babies.
Yours sincerely,
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John Deighan
Chief Executive Officer
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PS I hope you can see how every key objective I’ve listed here will save lives, and move us a step closer to our ultimate goal of making abortion “unthinkable”.
The undeniable truth is that abortion has become part of the fabric of life in modern-day Britain.
The number is shocking. The harm done to women staggering. And the gulf in financial resources between the abortion industry and the pro-life movement is enormous.
January is the most important month in SPUC’s fundraising calendar. The gifts we receive this month will decide how much we can do to defend precious babies in 2022.
If you have not managed to do so yet, please donate to SPUC’s New Year Appeal. Without the generosity of loyal rank and file, like you, SPUC really is powerless to act.
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