By Patrick Leahy, Director of Student LifeNet
You’re likely to be well aware of Michael Howard’s recent statement on lowering the ridiculously high 6-month abortion time limit and the resulting flurry of media coverage. You may, however, not know that this statement originated from a pro-abortion source.
For the past few months, Cosmopolitan magazine has been running a relentless campaign to defend the current abortion law. But like countless other pro-abortion initiatives it has fallen flat on its face.
Earlier this month, its editors interviewed the three main party leaders regarding their position on abortion. The intention was to lobby them to vote pro-choice. To their disappointment, only Tony Blair appeared to support their increasingly untenable position. Michael Howard stated his position more clearly than Charles Kennedy – voicing support for a lowering of the time limit to 20 weeks.
With the resulting media interest appearing to give the Tories an advantage and the pro-life movement another undeniable victory, the pro-abortion movement must be utterly embarrassed. For yet again they have shot themselves in the foot.
First it was the abortion documentary ‘My Foetus’. The film was supposed to persuade viewers that, despite the obvious humanity of the unborn baby, abortion is OK. Instead, most people were left thinking abortion was wrong after 12 weeks, and it helped to turn abortion into a regular feature on the front-pages of newspapers.
Next, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) fell into trouble with the government and the police for offering illegal abortions in Spain. Rather than putting pressure on the government to liberalise the law, the BPAS could face prosecution and loss of much-needed funding from the Department of Health.
Then the much-heralded Vera Drake film arrived on the scene. Abortion advocates got incredibly excited about this. But, as I noted in a letter to Spiked-Online (21.01.05), the film only served to continue to make abortion a newsworthy issue. Pro-abortionists believed it would remind people of the danger of backstreet abortion. But given we’re not near to criminalising abortion yet, the issue of backstreet abortions is entirely irrelevant in the minds of the public. It is, after all, not an issue when asking whether the abortion time limit should be lowered by 4 weeks. Hence the film only served to make abortion a continuing issue so that when an important politician makes a statement on abortion it turns into a frontpage event.
Now Cosmopolitan magazine’s gaffe. With only 3% of the entire population supporting, as they do, further liberalisation of the abortion law, it seems like the pro-abortionists can’t do anything right. As soon as they open their mouths all goes wrong for them. We wait eagerly for their next move.
That’s why we’re asking you to thank Cosmopolitan magazine. Without their, and their allies’, incompetence, abortion might not have been an issue in the forthcoming election. The pro-life movement has had its own successful initiatives of course (the Joanna Jepson case to name the most famous), but the pro-abortionists have put the icing on the cake. And we didn’t even have to spend a penny!
Thank them today! Email:
cosmo.mail@natmags.co.uk
