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Spring Fundraising Campaign - Day 4
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Dear Supporter,
Abortion coercion is rife in the UK today.
Coercion is at play whenever a partner, friend, colleague, parent, boss or healthcare professional uses their influence to pressure a woman to abort her unborn child.
It’s happening more often than people might think.
Researchers (pro- and anti-abortion) accept that coercion is a significant factor in abortion decisions:
- A recent BBC poll found that 15% of women aged 18-44 reported they had been pressured into having an abortion they did not want - that is 15% of ALL pregnant women - not just women who have had abortions.
- One respected academic study says coercion accounts for 1-in-4 abortions.
- The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute goes higher than that, reporting that coercion is responsible for 30% of all abortions.
- While SPUC’s sister organisation, Abortion Recovery Care and Helpline (ARCH) say that 3-in-4 callers to its helpline faced pressure to have their abortion.
The coercion problem is commonly acknowledged in medical circles too.
- In a recent ComRes poll of UK doctors, commissioned by SPUC, 86% of GPs said that they were “concerned about the risk of women being coerced into DIY abortions”.
Abortion coercion can take many forms
It can be blatant, and even violent, but more often pressure is a lot more subtle than that.
Employers can make women feel irresponsible for becoming pregnant and inadvertently push them towards abortion.
It’s entirely natural for women to worry about what impact having a new baby will have on them and those around them.
Continuing with a pregnancy may also:
Lead to a relationship ending...
Or...
Have women feel they will be judged for having brought “shame” on the family...
Or...
Reveal an adulterous relationship.
However you look at it, a woman is especially vulnerable in the early stages of her pregnancy.
The future can feel very scary even when the pregnancy is expected, planned for and desired.
This is not the time, then, to be introducing an additional fear factor into the emotional mix - as happens when women are called to undergo routine ante-natal screening for the ultimate purpose of screening-out and aborting unborn children with conditions like Down’s Syndrome.
Nor should women feel pressure from clinic staff to go through with an abortion when those same staff stand to gain financially from a bonus if they convert clinic appointments into actual abortions.
Hayley’s Story
Hayley was coerced by her boyfriend to have an abortion when she was just 16.
She writes:
“I found out that I was pregnant when I had just turned 16.
Scott didn't want to hear about it. He demanded that I have an abortion.
The abuse started again.
He would go between sweet nothings and trying to run me over with his car.
I really wanted my baby, but in that moment, I felt like I needed him more.”
When Hayley went to the abortion clinic, it was clear she didn’t want to be there.
But Hayley maintains that the clinic staff ignored many signs of abuse and proceeded with the abortion anyway. She writes of that day:
“A counsellor had to see me. I told her that I couldn't speak to her because, if I did, I would change my mind.
She sent me back to the waiting room.
I was crying so hard.
The nurse was stroking my hair and saying, ‘It will all be ok’.
The last thing I said before I went to sleep was, ‘No, it won’t.
Nothing will ever be ok again.’”
DIY abortion is fuelling coercion
Instead of taking steps to protect women from abortion coercion, the Government is permitting the situation to get worse with DIY abortion.
The DIY scheme is an abusers’ charter which enables those coercing women to escape detection and prosecution.
That’s because DIY abortion relies so heavily on “telemedicine” – a phone or skype consultation - rather than patients being seen face-to-face by a doctor.
Telemedicine enables an abuser to control every stage of a woman’s medical abortion.
Outside a private clinical setting, the opportunity for the patient to alert someone to an abusive situation, or for a trained healthcare professional to spot signs of abuse, is lost.
The heightened risk of haemorrhage (blood loss) associated with DIY abortions and the lack of medical backup in the home should things go wrong are other huge risk factors for women.
Downplaying Abortion Coercion
Coercion gives the lie to the idea that abortion is all about a woman’s “right to choose”.
The mantra of choice must be protected at all costs – including the heavy costs incurred by women (and unborn children) through bad abortion outcomes.
In a bid to detract from the scale of the abortion coercion taking place today, pro-abortion bodies are now desperately lumping together forced abortion with instances of “contraception sabotage” under the general heading of “reproductive or pregnancy coercion”.
“Reproductive coercion” describes a form of abuse where a person controls any aspect of a woman’s fertility.
But this is a case of “false equivalence”, an attempt to downplay the deaths of millions of defenceless unborn babies, and to hide the oppression of millions of women at a time in their lives when they are at their most vulnerable and in need of help and support to keep their babies.
They realise that if the truth about coercion is heard, the lie of “choice” will be out of the bag.
Then the whole rationale for legal abortion crumbles.
The public will realise that abortion is nothing more than a coercion tool to control and manipulate women, and that abortion hurts women.
Our opponents know all of this.
It frightens them, because it exposes them as frauds.
That’s why they are desperate to cover up and downplay the facts.
SPUC, on the other hand, is set to reveal the TRUTH about abortion coercion to the British public.
Will you help get the truth out about abortion coercion?
Your help is needed urgently to implement SPUC’s NEW Abortion Coercion Awareness Plan.
This major SPUC campaign is designed to alert women and girls of the widespread problem of abortion coercion through:
We especially want to reach age groups which are vulnerable to abortion coercion by developing a special coercion workshop (using professional actors) which will tour UK schools, colleges and universities.
- Advertising in city centres
Budget permitting, we intend to produce high-impact advertising which will appear on billboards in town and cities across the UK.
We would like to test employment law and support women experiencing pressure from employers to abort their babies.
Total estimated cost: £145,000
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Our long-term vision is beginning to take shape.
The abortion coercion awareness campaign is an important component in achieving SPUC’s long term goal - making abortion in the UK “unthinkable”.
Historical examples like the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage show how deeply entrenched social views can be changed through effective campaigning and educational work - not to mention legal action.
Reaching out and building a strong, unified pro-life coalition composed of people from different religious, cultural and political backgrounds who share our vision will be essential.
So, too, will be persuading key professionals who can help effect change in their own spheres of influence e.g. in the world of medicine, academia, journalism and, of course, politics.
Will you invest in SPUC’s vision of an abortion-free Britain with a monthly contribution of £10?
As the recent Covid pandemic has shown, raising money to defend our unborn babies can be a precarious business.
When churches closed down and SPUC events up and down the country were cancelled, fundraising suddenly became uncertain and unpredictable.
Why Direct Debit donations are so helpful
Donations paid from your bank account each month remain unaffected by world events ensuring that vital pro-life projects like the Abortion Coercion Awareness Campaign are not pushed off course or cancelled altogether.
(Our bank also charges a little less to process Direct Debit contributions than it does for one-off donations, so more of your money goes into the fight for our babies).
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I know that monthly donations aren’t for everyone.
One-off donations remain the bread and butter of SPUC’s work and we simply could not do without them.
Donations in the range of £15 to £50 or £100 or £500 or more make up the majority of our income each year.
It’s marvellous single donations like these which ensure that our work representing the unborn in schools, in Parliament, in the media, and in the courts continues this year.
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Whatever level of support you can manage today, be assured of its importance for the battle ahead this year.
THANK YOU.
Yours in defence of life
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John Deighan
Chief Executive
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PS - For decades, the abortion lobby has stood on the foundation of “choice”.
The “my body, my choice” mantra is proving to be hollow.
So many women report feeling that they had no choice in their abortion.
Your financial support helps to expose abortion coercion for the scandal it truly is.
It will help spread the truth that abortion is, and never was, about the woman’s “choice”.
In doing so, you are undermining the very foundation of the pro-abortion position which eventually will lead to it collapse.
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