Tuesday May 25, 2010
Marie Stopes Abortion Ads Generate Protest while Org Hosts China’s One Child Czar
By Hilary White
LONDON, May 25, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “If you miss your period, you could be pregnant. If you’re pregnant and don’t know what to do, Marie Stopes International can help.” So goes the voiceover on the new abortion adverts that started airing on British TV last night. Marie Stopes, one of the world’s largest abortionist groups, claims the ad is all about giving women information on “reproductive services” on their telephone consultation line. But pro-life advocates have called the ad nothing more than “deceitful propaganda,” pointing out that 90 per cent of Marie Stopes’s business is abortion.
At the same time, Marie Stopes has angered protesters against China’s occupation of Tibet by hosting a lecture by Li Bin, communist China’s top family planning official. The group Tibet Truth has expressed its outrage over the event, citing the coercive one child policy that has “traumatized countless women in China and occupied regions such as Tibet and East Turkestan” – a policy that Li Bin is responsible for enforcing.
Anthony Ozimic, communications manager for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) told media today, in reference to the Marie Stopes ad, that, “The advertisement… doesn’t explain what Marie Stopes is and what Marie Stopes does,” which is “the killing of unborn children.”
Marie Stopes’ “consultation line,” he said, is nothing more than an “abortion booking service” that fast-tracks women into an abortion facility.
Marie Stopes is one of the world’s busiest abortionist organizations, responsible in 2008 for almost 600,000 abortions overseas. Most of its £100 million annual income comes from abortion and is spent on abortion, including extensive political lobbying for lifting legal restrictions.
“Marie Stopes advertises itself as an abortion provider on the London Underground but has soft-soaped its image in this Channel 4 advertisement,” Ozimic told LifeSiteNews.com. “We are still examining the legality of the ad.”
Marie Stopes has claimed that the government has approved their ads; but according to the broadcast regulations, advertising for abortion is not allowed if the intention is to make a profit. Marie Stopes has skirted the rules because it is officially classed as a charity.
SPUC has written to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt, urging him to instruct the British broadcasting regulator Ofcom to block the ads. “We are calling on the government to suspend the advertisement whilst a proper investigation can be conducted into the ad’s legality and ethical standards, or lack thereof.”
“Women deserve better than abortion. We want the government to ensure that women are not misled by this kind of deceitful propaganda.”
Although the ads are not airing in Northern Ireland, where abortion remains illegal, the Belfast-based Precious Life has called for a boycott of the BBC’s Channel 4 that agreed to carry them. Channel 4 has said that the ads have been approved for broadcast by the authorities and that it is running them at an appropriate time, late in the evenings. But Precious Life said that the ads “mislead viewers by portraying Marie Stopes International as a organisation helping vulnerable women by providing an abortion ‘service’.”
“What they won’t show is the horrific reality of unborn children killed by abortion, or the physical and emotional harm suffered by women after abortion. Abortion is not a ‘service’ – it is a dis-service to vulnerable women.”
At the same time, Marie Stopes’ image as a disinterested charity promoting women’s rights has taken a blow from Tibet Truth, who published a report titled “Welcome To Marie Stopes Madame Sterilization.” The report criticized the fact that Li Bin, the Minister of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, the ministry responsible for the country’s coercive one child policy, gave a talk at Marie Stopes’ London headquarters on Wednesday.
Marie Stopes is one of the major players, along with the United Nations Fund for Population and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, who have supported China’s one-child population control program. That program has resulted in a disastrous gender imbalance in the population, since unborn girls in China are routinely targeted and killed due to a cultural preference for boys.
Tibet Truth said Marie Stopes “would appear oblivious to the horrifying women’s human rights violations caused by China’s coercive birth-control policies.” Marie Stopes, they said, “seems unable to offer a word of public condemnation, concern or opposition to such medical atrocities.”
Tibet Truth noted that organizers of a protest against Ms. Li’s appearance in London “bizarrely … went out-of-their way to state that they were not targeting Marie Stopes International, an organization which by its silence, and open support of the Chinese population program, surely merits criticism and challenge.”
The demonstration was organized by Amnesty International (AI), a group that has recently adopted the promotion of abortion as an international “human right” as a major policy. In a press release AI specifically said that their protest was”not a protest against the organisation the Minister is visiting, Marie Stopes International, who will hopefully be showing the Minister best practices in the areas of family planning.”