Cranmer on the ASA and advertising abortion

His Grace says everything I want to.

A few years back, the pro-abortion lobby and abortion providers like BPAS and Marie Stopes promoted an effort in Parliament to change the law to ‘protect’ pregnant women from pregnancy advice services that do not provide abortion. The pro-abortion groups were worried that they were ‘losing customers’ to pro-life agencies. However, the law was not changed. The pro-abortion lobby now wants the ASA’s Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice to change the code of practice both to allow abortion providers to advertise on TV and radio and to impose on anti-abortion groups a restriction similar to (but more dictatorial than) the unsuccessful parliamentary amendment.

The objective is to reduce the teenage pregnancy rate, which is the highest in Europe. It is curious that, at a time when all advertising for cigarettes and tobacco is banned in order to avoid promoting and propagating the habit, the move is towards permitting advertisements for abortion. If there is correlation between advertising and increased numbers smoking, how can there not be between advertising and increased numbers seeking abortion?

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But advertising abortion is to draw favourable attention to murder. It is to describe the tortuous process in pleasant and attractive terms in order to influence women and girls of its benefits and to promote its merits above its demerits. Why otherwise would providers spend money promoting their services if they could not recoup their investment and profit further still?

The Broadcast Committee of the Advertising Standards Authority is conducting a consultation on its proposals until 19th June 2009. It will issue its conclusions in the Autumn. As part of the consultation, the Broadcasting committee is seeking the views of the general public. This means that the views of Cranmer’s readers and communicants will be taken into account.

After Friday, if you have not made your point, it will be assumed that you are either indifferent or that you approve.

Cranmer exhorts all who care about this to email the Code Policy Team at consult@cap.org.uk.

Their website recommends that if you write to them, you should include a response cover sheet. If you wish to email them, the link to this is on their website, but for convenience, you can download it from HERE.

His Grace does not need to patronise his readers and communicants with the usual letter-writing guidance which accompanies these sorts of pleas. He is sure that you are all capable of expressing how offensive and disturbing these proposals are, and how abhorrent and profoundly immoral it would be to shroud the horrors of abortion in lightness and joy and promote it in the same fashion as chocolate and instant coffee.