This week marks the anniversary of the birthday of writer and journalist, George Orwell. Most famously remembered for his novels 1984 and Animal Farm, Orwell filled pages, bookshelves and minds with sinister suspicions and theories. Are our thoughts being manipulated and controlled? Has the truth been warped and replaced? Is Big Brother watching us? Whilst Orwell’s depictions of our future, to some, can still be viewed as wanting, it is truly unsettling to witness the stark similarities surfacing between Orwell’s malevolent depictions and the attack on the pro-life message.
"Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper"
It is not difficult to detect the growing bias and misinformation circulating throughout our media platforms. What was intended to be a profession of truth and accuracy has contorted into a menacing corporation, brimming with misinformation and propaganda terms devised to capture reader attention and distort their view of the pro-life message.
The pro-life message is simple. It is one of peace, human dignity and the rejection of violence. Yet media platforms throughout the decades have warped the truth and the minds of their readers, referring to the pro-life movement through misleading propaganda such as ‘anti-choice’ ‘forced- birth’ or ‘pro-death.’ In February of this year, leading media outlet The Daily Telegraph published a false and severely misleading headline regarding peaceful pro-life vigils which read: "Police called in after medics attacked by anti-abortion campaigners." In reality - abortion clinic staff had simply requested a meeting with the police. The misleading rhetoric projected out of such media outlets seems part of the relentless onslaught to warp public perception of pro-life people and tarnish their image. It can even be speculated that the unwillingness of newspapers to correctly illustrate the truth regarding pro-life people has contributed to the spree of violent attacks committed against elderly pro-life volunteers across the country earlier this year.
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’."
It was undoubtedly the fabrication of statistics and information which aided in paving the way for commonplace abortion in the United Kingdom. 1960s Britain witnessed the pro-abortion lobby advocate for the implementation of the Abortion Act on the sympathetic grounds of death and injury occurring from so called ‘backstreet abortions.’ For those who know the truth, we can look back and witness the pro-abortion lobby peddle a line of deceit - a lie, which now the public believes to be an unbreakable truth.
It was repeatedly argued that in order to overcome death and injury occurring from backstreet abortions the implementation of the Abortion Act was vital. The pro-abortion lobby argued that hundreds of thousands of women were suffering from the effects of backstreet abortions. David Steel MP, the principle sponsor of the Abortion Act claimed: "I would not settle for any definite figure, but it is probably between 40,000 and 200,000 a year." In 1966, the Council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) revealed that in 1962, around 14,600 women used backstreet abortionists based on an analysis of hospital admissions. The RCOG Council stated: "It has been repeatedly stated that as many as 100,000 criminal abortions are induced in this country each year and a more recent estimate is 250,000. These are without any secure factual foundation of which we are aware."
In reality, at the time of the implementation of the 1967 Abortion Act, maternal death rates were already steadily decreasing. This was not due to the implementation of abortion, but instead due to the growing availability of antibiotics. It is shocking but evident that the pro-abortion lobby paved the way for the Abortion Act through widespread misinformation. To further their agenda, they warped the truth and replaced it with a lie. They manipulated the heart-strings of a nation with deceit, which is now ingrained as a common truth.
"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
The pro-life message is one that has been subjected to criticism. However, in the past year we have seen it subjected to a cruel form of censorship. The pro-life position seeks to help women in crisis. It seeks to offer women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy the support, information and resources that may help them keep their baby. It is a message that many pro-abortion advocates do not want to hear.
In the April of 2018, Ealing council imposed a Public Space Protection Order, also referred to as a censorship zone, around a Marie Stopes abortion clinic. Richmond Council shortly followed in their decision to impose censorship zone also. The censorship zone was a direct attack on pro-life volunteers who peacefully provided information to those considering an abortion. The censorship zones not only stripped people of the basic freedoms of speech, assembly and expression, but it also very blatantly silenced a message that abortion advocates did not want to hear.
The right to freedom of speech and expression are some of the core pillars which uphold a democratic society. The infringement on such rights by Councils was an infringement on freedom itself.
"If you want a vision of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
Abortion kills humans. Abortion poisons, starves, suctions and dismembers innocent humans to death whilst their mothers and families are often left to suffer the mental and physical trauma alone. Through abortion, the dignity and wellbeing of humans, born and unborn is abused and violated.
Orwell’s harrowing message sadly can be seen through the 2018 abortion statistics which saw a ten - year high in abortion rates across the UK. 218, 518 innocent humans were killed last year. They were stripped of their dignity and their basic human rights. The statistics also illustrate the devastating impact abortion is having upon girls and women across the country's poorer regions. It was exposed that women from the country’s poorer regions where twice as likely to undergo an abortion compared to women from the countries wealthiest regions. Information published in evidence-based review Abortion and Women’s Health, found that women who have had an abortion are six times more likely to commit suicide compared to women who give birth, 30% more likely to suffer from depression and 25% more likely to suffer from anxiety.
Abortion represents not only the violent killing of humans, it is also a reflection upon society’s failing of women and families and the disregard of human dignity.
"There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world you were not mad"
The regime aimed at normalising abortion has truly infiltrated society. It is commonly and repeatedly referred to as ‘health-care’, ‘birth-control’, ‘human rights’ or ‘women’s rights’, all in the attempt to distract from its core aim- to end human life, and instead promote it as normality.
The determination to normalise abortion is now perversely infiltrating our school systems with materials designed to promote and encourage the killing of unborn humans to be taught to pupils aged 15 plus. Indoctrination such as this is simply part of the growing desire to raise a generation that will not question the true nature of abortion, and instead accept the lie.
Since the implementation of the Abortion Act, society has drifted further from the truth and into the arms of propaganda and misinformation. In a time where we are subjected to the normalisation of killing, it can be a challenge to cling to the one string of truth left. So, in a world that has come to hate the truth and hate those who speak it, just remember, you are not alone. You are not mad.