Liam Gibson, blogpost

This month marks the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. When it was formed to oppose David Steel’s Bill to legalise abortion, SPUC became the first pro-life lobby group in the world. Sadly, the work of the Society is even more necessary today than it was in 1967.

Much of the science we take for granted was still to emerge 55 years ago. There was nothing like the detailed knowledge of foetal development that is available to doctors today. High-definition photography and moving three-dimensional scans of babies prove, beyond doubt, the humanity of the unborn child.

Diagnostic techniques and the resources that would dramatically reduce the mortality rate in pregnancy and childbirth were still a long way off. Surgery to correct neural tube defects while a baby was still in the womb was simply unimaginable when Steel’s Bill was passed in a more than half-empty House of Commons by 223 votes to 29.

Yet, despite the unparalleled knowledge gained in the last 55 years, the death toll from abortion continues to rise. In 2020, there were 209,917 abortions in England and Wales alone. This figure doesn’t include those caused by abortifacient birth control nor the lives lost to the IVF industry.

No doubt, had some of the supporters of the Abortion Act had access to the information available today, they would have voted against it. To their eternal credit, the small group of committed individuals who formed SPUC did not need this kind of evidence. They recognised the evil of abortion for what it was and saw the dangers of its legalisation.

SPUC continues the fight

Since 1967, SPUC has fought to restore legal protection for all unborn children, and in the intervening years SPUC’s outreach, its campaigns and its legal actions have saved innumerable lives.

Some of the major events that SPUC has been involved with in the last decade include:

• Legal action in 2011 helped to prevent a change in the law that would have allowed abortions to take place in the home.
• In April 2013, SPUC backed two midwives from Glasgow fighting for the right to conscientiously object to abortion. Tragically, their unanimous victory in the Appeal Court was overturned by the Supreme Court the following year.
• In 2015, SPUC lobbying contributed to the defeat of assisted suicide legislation.
• In 2017, lobbying led to the decision by the Home Office to reject proposals to introduce “buffer” zones around abortion facilities in England and Wales.
• In 2021, SPUC’s campaigning prevented domestic violence legislation from being used to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales.

Each individual life saved is a crucial victory, but it is not possible to calculate how many lives were saved when potential disasters were prevented.

Northern Ireland

The true significance of these efforts will never be fully understood. There is, however, one small area that gives an indication of the importance of SPUC’s work: and that is Northern Ireland. In the 1980s, the Society was instrumental in kick-starting the pro-life movement in Northern Ireland as a political force that lobbied relentlessly against the legalisation of abortion. Again and again, the abortion threat was beaten back by the combined efforts of the whole of the Society, in Britain as well as Northern Ireland.

As a grassroots organisation, the entire support base, the staff and its leadership helped to save the lives of tens of thousands of babies who would have been killed had the Abortion Act been extended. Westminster’s unjust and illegitimate decision in 2019 to impose on the Province the most radical abortion regime in Europe has marked a turning point in the pro-life battle, but the severity of this legislation is, in part, revenge for the years of resistance.

As SPUC enters its 56th year of campaigning, its supporters, donors and activists remain committed to raising their voices against the killing of innocent children and to save their mothers from the often-devastating consequences of abortion. It is a strong, tightly-knit, grassroots organisation with members working tirelessly in their local area to change the hearts and minds of their fellow citizens in Huddersfield and Canterbury, in Armagh and Cardiff, in Glasgow and Aberdeen, street by street, one individual at a time.

That is where the law on abortion needs to be challenged before it can be changed in Parliament. That is the objective of SPUC’s educational and campaigning work and it’s more necessary now than ever.