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Spring Fundraising Campaign - Day 9
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Dear Supporter,
SPUC supporters can be rightly proud of the vital role that they are playing (and have played down the years) in this long and arduous battle to save babies and end abortion.
In the first few months of 2022, we’ve contended with two major setbacks and fresh threats to life, coming at us thick and fast on several different fronts.
The road to success is never smooth or easily travelled.
By way of encouragement, I would like to take stock and share with you some of the magnificent fruits that your loyal support for SPUC has borne for babies (and their mothers) in the recent past.
Life-saving actions made possible by SPUC supporters
1. Buffer zones victory - 2018
In a huge win for mothers and their babies, the Home Secretary rejected a call from our opponents to introduce UK-wide legislation that would criminalise pro-lifers who gather at abortion facilities and offer pregnant women alternatives to abortion.
SPUC dispatched over 80,000 postcards to people wanting to contact the Home Secretary.
Announcing the result of the Home Office's review into "protests" outside abortion clinics, Sajid Javid said it would "not be a proportionate response" to introduce national “buffer zones".
2. Scottish home abortion court challenge - 2018
SPUC took the Scottish Government to court in a move to thwart the rollout of home abortions.
Unlike DIY abortion, home abortion involves only the second of two abortion pills being taken at home (the second pill’s ghastly action is to expel the dead babies’ remains).
Home abortion was nevertheless the forerunner for the DIY abortion scheme we have today, where both pills are taken at home without medical supervision.
Though SPUC eventually lost the case, taking legal action in Scotland delayed the expansion of home abortions into other parts of the UK.
It’s estimated that by delaying the introduction of the scheme into England and Wales many thousands of unborn babies’ lives were saved.
SPUC received nothing in legal aid to fight this case. SPUC supporters raised every penny of the £300,000 legal bill.
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3. Support scheme for pregnant students launched - 2019
The Alma Mater Fund provides grants for pregnant university students enabling them to complete their studies and keep their babies.
By offering financial support and signposting students to access further help that they are entitled to, the scheme is offering a practical alternative to abortion.
In common parlance, Alma Mater is your old college or university.
The more literal translation from the Latin - “nourishing mother" - beautifully expresses SPUC's vision for the Fund.
The number of students helped has doubled with the Fund’s expansion from Scotland into Northern Ireland, and we hope to eventually cover the whole of the UK.
4. Schools outreach – 2019
An estimated 15,000 pupils heard the truth about abortion thanks to SPUC’s interactive classroom presentation at schools across the country.
And around 7,000 Heads of RE and Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) were offered tailor-made pro-life educational materials for use in classroom lessons free-of-charge.
5. Domestic Abuse Bill Victory - 2020
Our opponents bid to hijack the Domestic Abuse Bill in an effort to (1) decriminalise abortion in the UK and (2) make DIY abortion permanent thankfully failed.
SPUC supporters up and down the country lobbied hard to defeat this push for more abortion and an entirely unrelated, opportunistic amendment was not given any parliamentary time.
6. Pippa Knight case - 2021
When a court ruled that doctors could stop providing Pippa Knight (pictured) with life support in a London hospital, SPUC funded the legal challenge to fight for her to receive a portable ventilator so that she could die naturally at home surrounded by her family.
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Tragically, the Supreme Court refused to hear Pippa’s appeal.
Her ventilator was switched off and Pippa sadly died in hospital on 6th May 2021, two weeks after her sixth birthday.
7. Northern Ireland abortion challenge – 2022
When the UK Government introduced The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021 to side-line pro-life politicians in the Province, SPUC began legal proceedings to prevent Ministers from being forced to implement Westminster’s extremist abortion agenda.
It came as a major blow, then, when on 8th February 2022, Mr Justice Colton ruled that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, acted lawfully when he directed Ministers to implement the abortion regulations.
The Colton ruling is a disaster for unborn babies.
The ruling means that Mr Lewis can amend or repeal any law in Northern Ireland he sees as incompatible with the abortion “recommendations” contained in the United Nations CEDAW Report. Yet we remain hopeful that SPUC's upcoming appeal court challenge will prove successful.
8. DIY abortion consultation victory – 2022
In February - in great news for babies and women - the Department of Health and Social Care announced that the horrendous DIY abortion scheme would come to an end this summer.
The scheme was introduced during March 2020 in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.
It was intended to be a temporary measure - or so we were told - but the abortion side lobbied hard to make it permanent and a public consultation was announced.
SPUC’s submission to the consultation included responses from a SPUC commissioned survey of doctors.
- 86% of GPs polled agreed that they were “concerned about women being at risk of being coerced into an abortion” with a telemedicine appointment.
Yet shockingly, the Government’s decision to scrap DIY abortion was made null and void, in March, when the abortion lobby in Parliament hijacked the Health and Care Bill with a DIY abortion amendment, a bitter blow indeed.
DIY abortion is the Number 1 threat to unborn children and their mothers today
1. It is PUSHING UP abortion in the UK to record levels
- In England, Wales and Scotland there were 228,732 registered abortions in 2020 (the same year that the pills-by-post scheme was introduced).
MORE unborn children were killed by abortion in 2020, than in any other year since the Abortion Act came into force in 1968.
2. It has led to soaring hospitalisations for post-abortive women
Freedom of information data reveal that:
- 1-in-17 women who used the DIY abortion scheme in 2020 needed hospital treatment.
While emergency ambulance call-outs for complications arising from abortion pills were three times higher for women who took abortion pills at home compared to those who had taken them at an abortion facility.
3. DIY abortion policy is an abuser’s charter
The scheme’s reliance on “telemedicine” allows a third-party to control the abortion process from beginning to end.
- Researchers say that a staggering “1-in-4” abortions occur because of pressure from others (and that is a conservative figure).
Telemedicine removes the safeguard of a face-to-face consultation with a trained doctor who could spot signs of partner, employer or parental coercion, and maybe stop the abortion.
ABORTION COERCION AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
SPUC is set to launch what we believe to be the biggest ever pro-life public relations campaign ever mounted in the UK in a bid to:
- Explain to women and girls why DIY abortion is not about “choice” but rather a tool abusers can use to control women and put their health and wellbeing at grave risk
- Inform journalists, politicians, faith leaders and others who hold positions of influence just how big a problem DIY abortion really is and urge them to take action
- Force the courts to examine the impact of abortion coercion from a legal standpoint.
The campaign has three component parts:
1. Outreach to the young
We want to change hearts and minds of young people who are being constantly bombarded with anti-family, anti-life propaganda in schools and elsewhere.
This will include
- Producing a workshop looking at abortion coercion using professional actors to tour UK schools, colleges and universities.
In addition, we are planning a new school talk and other resources to align with National Curriculum requirements thus enabling open classroom discussion.
Estimated cost: £20,000
2. Advertising in public spaces
We want to deploy high-visibility, high-impact billboard advertising to warn women about abortion.
In recent years, SPUC billboards - like the one pictured (below) - have been used to good effect in SPUC’s campaign in Northern Ireland.
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Estimated Cost: £45,000
3. Legal action
SPUC has a proud tradition of providing legal support to pro-life people facing pressure at work to participate in abortion.
We would like to extend that support to include women experiencing pressure from employers to abort their babies.
SPUC is willing to test employment law and take a legal case to defend a victim of coercion, or press for compensation for wrongdoing in the workplace.
Estimated cost = £80,000
Additional Danger
In addition to fighting back against DIY abortion, SPUC is currently engaged in a legal battle to stop the imposition of extreme abortion regulations which are set to massively increase abortions in Northern Ireland.
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, has stipulated that he wants to see 6,000 abortions take place annually in the Province.
That’s a HUGE jump from the 10 -20 or so abortion deaths each year under the old restrictive abortion law.
SPUC strongly disagrees with Mr Justice Colton’s February ruling which gave Brandon Lewis the green light to implement the extreme abortion regulations.
In a bid to save babies’ lives our legal team is preparing to take SPUC’s case to the Belfast Court of Appeal, which entails a legal bill estimated to be in the region of £82,000.
I hope that you can see just how important a role that SPUC supporters, like YOU, will play in the next few months ahead.
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Supporters’ response to SPUC’s spring fundraising appeal has been remarkable.
Donations totalling £41,760 have been raised so far online to fund vital pro-life actions in the crucial months ahead.
I would like to say “thank you” to everyone who has contributed so generously to the spring fundraising appeal over this past week or so.
Your vital contribution is fuelling the fightback for our babies.
Every pound raised will help defend unborn children in these ways:
- Presentations in schools and universities
- Speakers appearing on the media to be a voice for our babies
- Lobbying at Westminster and the other UK parliaments and assemblies
- Court actions to uphold the sanctity of life
- Awareness campaigns alerting women to the hurt caused by abortion coercion.
When donations from this month’s SPUC postal appeal are factored in, the amount raised so far totals a staggering £121,760 against a financial target of £145,000.
With just ONE DAY left to run, another £23,240 is still needed to get us over the line and secure the funding needed to implement the Awareness Campaign + Appeal Challenge
Will you give £20 today and help ACTION these life-saving projects?
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Thank you for your tremendous support.
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John Deighan
Chief Executive
PS – Supporters like you have played a starring role in the success of SPUC’s past political campaigns, educational outreach programmes and pro-life court actions.
These actions have saved thousands of babies’ lives over the past 5 years alone.
Sadly, we cannot rest on our laurels.
Our powerful and wealthy opponents NEVER miss the opportunity to strike and when they do MORE babies die.
We saw this earlier this year when we suffered two huge blows with the Colton Ruling + the DIY abortion amendment.
We must go on the offensive.
And with abortion killings at record levels, we have 228,732 reasons to fight back.
And that number is set to grow higher still if Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis’s abortion regulations go unchallenged and the horrors of DIY abortion (including coercion of women) is not exposed.
Right now, I am personally involved in preparing several other exciting new projects which I believe will have additional impact on saving lives – more on this in coming weeks.
But we cannot make progress in this fight without your continued financial support.
Please join the fightback for our babies TODAY.
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BREAKING NEWS!
Unconfirmed reports today say that the US Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v Wade, the 1973 court ruling which legalised abortion.
It is alleged that an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito has been leaked to media platform Politico.
If true, individual US states would acquire the legal power to limit or outright ban abortion. Many ‘conservative’ states would likely do so.
That we are even hearing murmurings of overturning Roe v Wade is totally unprecedented and potentially game changing – and not only for Americans.
SPUC is no less determined than its US counterparts to end abortion.
SPUC’s organisational vision is to make abortion “unthinkable” in the UK and the Abortion Coercion Awareness Campaign + Northern Ireland Appeal Case are a firm indication of our intent to see that happen here.
But we urgently need YOUR help to turn that vision into a reality.
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