The first television advert for unplanned pregnancy advice will be screened tonight. It's said Christian bodies are outraged and are considering legal action to stop the broadcast.
Marie Stopes hopes its advertisement for unplanned pregnancy advice will raise awareness of sexual health. It comes after a study found less than half of UK adults knew where to go for advice in the event of an unplanned pregnancy other than their GP.
The director of the Christian Legal Centre slammed the commercial as an advert for the 'destruction of human life'. Its director said: "Members of the public will be enraged that such adverts are allowed to be beamed into their living rooms, especially as early as 10.10pm, when very many teenagers are around."
Surely that the point of the advertisement - to target teenagers.
I know a little about the work of the Marie Stopes organisation and have found it most professional and staffed by those who are extremely well informed in all areas of sexual health. The advertisement is not in the least offensive and quietly informative.
Sex education in schools hasn't helped decrease the number of teenage pregnancies much over the years; neither has it influenced the cases of STDs. Perhaps it is time the real experts became involved and if that necessitates the use of television advertisements I'm all for it.
Iain Dale has a breakdown of the latest Department of Health figures for abortions in England and Wales 2009. What is interesting is that 6,643 abortions for non-residents were carried out in hospitals and clinics in 2009. It's not my intention to start a debate about abortion. Suffice to say I am very firmly pro-choice even after listening to all sides of the argument over the years.
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Thanks for posting that - I hadn't seen the advert, but I had heard some of the chat about it. Seems a bit of an over-reaction.
SR, I have responded to your self-proclaimed rant at my place. I don't want to just copy and paste here.
Didn't you think it was worth mentioning that Marie Stopes was quite insane and a Nazi sympathiser to boot?
What about the wider eugenics movement? What about the system that seeks to make teenagers dysfunctional so they don't start families?
What about the population reduction agenda?
This advert is merely being used to normalise murdering weans.
Agree with you Belle.
Yes it was a self-proclaimed rant Stewart and and told you the reason for it. Women's sexual health issues have nothing to do with men. Nothing whatsoever unless the woman requests the assistance of a man.
I reiterate, just because Marie Stopes was a Nazi sympathiser doesn't make her approach to women's health wrong.
I've no idea of any system which makes teenagers dysfunctional other than the present education system.
Any population agenda is nothing to do with women's sexual health. I know nothing about it but it wouldn't surprise me if it was the male population who were responsible.
I've never heard you being so vocal about the many deaths of our elderly due to hypothermia Stewart. Is that not a form of murder that you don't want to mention?
The basic reason abortion was legalised in the UK was simply because young women were dying or becoming seriously ill after botched back street abortions.
I believe this was a sound reason .
That was, and probably still is the reality of the situation.
Stewart is highly (but not naturally) selective in his targets. Abortion, homsexuality, and globalisation principally to the detriment of Christian freedoms (but not a pregnant woman's freedom of choice not to continue with her pregnancy or any adult's right to consensual sex with any other adult) are irredeemably evil to him. He seldom identifies anything else that is.
Abortion is a terrible thing and anyone who approaches it lightly -mother or father - lacks something very important. But criminalising it is a terrible thing too.
wv: vatic. Close but no mitre
I remember being made to watch propaganda films at school on such topics as smoking and alcohol, probably underage sex too but I don't remember that one.
Either way I didn't take any notice of any of them and I don't suppose that todays teenagers are much different, that should cheer up 'The director of the Christian Legal Centre'.
The single biggest thing the government could do to reduce teenage pregnancies would be to repeal Section 167 of the 1996 Housing Act; and particularly the section which gives automatic priority to
"(c) families with dependent children,
(d) households consisting of or including someone who is expecting a child,"
To put it bluntly, if you pay people to have babies, they will have babies.
....as early as 10.10pm, when very many teenagers are around."
Well aye. Because THEY are the target blopody audience you bunch of choir boy shagging twats!
"Sex education in schools hasn't helped decrease the number of teenage pregnancies"
No, it hasn't. One might almost conclude that youngsters have had about as much sex education as they can handle.
I suspect that telling weans that there's a way to get rid of weans will lead to an increase thereof.
It seems that the more sex education and abortion information there is available the more people there is getting pregnant and demanding abortions.
Weird, eh?
You're taking me back a few years there banned. The only propaganda I had was from BBC Schools Radio. Don't remember anything it ever said except use a hankie to blow your nose. ;)
It may be blunt Weekend Yachtsman but it's the truth.
I was reading something the other day about marriage tax breaks and the writer said they were done away with, by Gordon Brown, to fund 'families in need' and solve the housing crisis. It was one of those website which had all the ins and outs of taxation over the years.
Exactly Furor. The protestors are so hung up on the content - or lack of it.
I've never been happy with the age sex education starts in schools William and it is still dropping down the age groups.
That's very true. Kids know if they drink too much alcohol a hospital will sort them out (something said to me by one recently) so the same criteria applies here.
Like I said in our other debate, the unborn child is as much the man's as the woman's. And as English Viking astutely noted: the unborn child - that’s we used to call them, before attempts were made to desensitise us from killing them by giving them abstract medical names.
My point about Marie Stopes being a Nazi sympathiser - actually, a Nazi-like eugenicist who wanted poor people and blacks sterilised, which is why she opened her abortion clinics in poorer areas - was because abortion has been made to look 'acceptable' over the past few decades by stealth when it belongs to the Third Reich.
We're going to have to agree to disagree about this issue Stewart. As I've said Marie Stokes' political and private life didn't make all her ideas dreadful.
I agree the unborn child is as much the man's as the woman's. The problem is the man doesn't have any responsibility for it until birth. Many women don't even bother to tell the man she's pregnant these days.
To be honest I've never heard any woman refer to her pregnancy as her unborn child. Maybe that's a male term.
I think English Viking and yourself should perhaps spend some time at a Marie Stopes clinic or any other women's sexual health clinic. It may open your idealist eyes.
Rosie, I don't do "have to agree to disagree" because one of us is wrong. It's not like agreeing to disagree about the best ever film or song, which is subjective and doesn't really matter anyway.
Ciggie packets say something like: "smoking harms your unborn child," not foetus or blob of cells.
I don't have to visit one of Stopes' death camps to know what's right and wrong.
Stewart, you're a lovely man and I appreciate your point of view. But you're taking about something which you'll never experience.
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