A blog launched on the 41st anniversary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the first pro-life organisation in the world, established on 11 January 1967. SPUC has been a leader in the educational and political battle against abortion, human embryo experimentation and euthanasia since then. I write this blog in my role as SPUC's chief executive, commenting on pro-life news, reflecting on pro-life issues and promoting SPUC's work.
SPUC supporters will distribute leaflets outside GPs’ surgeries where abortions are performed. We are responding to news that the number of such surgeries has tripled following government approval. The family doctors’ surgeries carry out so-called early medical abortions using the RU-486 drug, also known as mifepristone.
Abortion kills children and therefore we must not allow abortion to be normalised in this way. Women deserve to know the truth about the humanity of unborn children and about the physical and psychological damage abortion does to women. SPUC will therefore be leafleting GPs' surgeries nationwide with scientifically-established medical research which explains how abortion kills children and hurts women.
SPUC has responded to the news that scientists in Newcastle, England, have created embryos using genetic material from two women and one man in order to address mitochondrial diseases.
Anthony Ozimic, SPUC's communications manager, told the media this morning:
"Scientists should stop killing and abusing human beings in experiments. None of the 80 or more embryos created by the Newcastle team were allowed to live. Each of those embryos were members of the human family, with a right to life equal to those of the scientists who killed them. Human life begins at conception. Any grounds for denying human rights to human embryos are arbitrary and self-serving.
"Creating embryonic children in the laboratory abuses them, by subjecting them to unnatural processes. As with IVF and cloning, this mitochondrial technique may well lead to developmental abnormalities.
"Scientists should respect human life and pursue ethical alternatives which are much more likely to be successful in the long-term."
The Linacre Centre is a Catholic academic institute that engages with the moral questions arising in clinical practice and biomedical research. It brings to bear on those questions principles of natural law, virtue ethics, and the teaching of the Catholic Church, and seeks to develop the implications of that teaching for emerging fields of practice. The Centre engages in scholarly dialogue with academics and practitioners of other traditions. It contributes to public policy debates as well as to debates and consultations within the Church. It runs educational programmes for, and gives advice to, Catholics and other interested healthcare professionals and biomedical scientists.
The Linacre Centre's next international conference will be held on 16-18 June at Maynooth, Ireland (near Dublin), on the theme of "Fertility, Infertility and Gender". Speakers will include Professor Luke Gormally, Professor David Paton and Dr Phil Boyle.
On Tuesday 27th April, the 42nd anniversary of the legalisation of abortion, please pray and fast for the end of abortion and euthanasia. Your prayer and fasting is urgently needed. (Monday 26 April is also the feast day of Our Lady of Good Counsel.)
A great prayer for life is urgently needed. Pope John Paul II
Join us each month in prayer and fasting:
fasting: Fast from all food except bread and water for the day or fast from a particular food or luxury, e.g. chocolate, alcohol, cigarettes, TV. Fast from whatever you can given your state of health etc, but make sure it is something that involves a sacrifice to yourself.
prayer: We are asking people to say a Rosary (or an extra Rosary if you say it daily already). You could also offer an extra effort such as going to Mass (or an extra Mass) on the day, or going to Adoration. You can even pray before a closed tabernacle if Adoration is not available near you.
And He said to them; This kind (of demon) can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.(Gospel of Mark 9:29)
For information on the day of prayer and fasting contact The Good Counsel Network on 020 7723 1740.
And the people of Ninevah believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least…God saw their efforts to renounce their evil ways. And God relented about the disaster which He had threatened to bring on them, and He did not bring it.(Jonah 3:5,10)
I became involved in SPUC after graduating, when I established a branch in south London in 1974. I have worked full-time for SPUC for 33 years. I became director of SPUC in the UK in 1996, having been general secretary since 1978. I was elected vice-president of International Right to Life Federation in 2005. At UN conferences in Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, Istanbul and Rome, I helped coordinate more than 150 pro-life/pro-family groups resulting in pro-life victories in Cairo, Istanbul and Rome. I was educated at Salesian College, London, before going to Oxford where I graduated in English Language and Literature. I qualified as a teacher, becoming head of English at a secondary school. I am married to Josephine. We have a grown-up family and we live in north London.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to SPUC's staff, supporters and advisers for their help to me in researching, writing and producing this blog.
I believe that I am allowed to use the images accompanying my blog and that they are licence- and royalty-free. However if the owner or the licensor disagrees, please contact me and I will remove it immediately.
