SPUC has slammed the BBC’s recent reporting on the new Health Secretary Therese Coffey’s pro-life stance on abortion. “The BBC’s coverage was profoundly one-sided and not in keeping with its responsibility to report fairly and without favour to either side of the abortion debate”, said SPUC.
Health Secretary Therese Coffey is a Catholic with reportedly anti-abortion views and has previously voted against pro-abortion legislation in Parliament. In 2010, Ms Coffey called for mental health assessments for women seeking abortions because of the psychological risks associated with killing an unborn child.
But now, Clare Murphy, chief executive of the pro-abortion British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), has said that Ms Coffey’s pro-life position is “deeply concerning” and is putting “personal beliefs above expert clinical guidance”, an assertion repeated in a BBC article condemned by SPUC and other pro-life groups.
SPUC has pointed out that the BBC’s article was “profoundly one-sided since it simply regurgitated pro-abortion BPAS statements without challenge or offering an alternate view. The entire BBC article was underscored by a shocking pro-abortion bias, assuming that such a view must be right and just, and that such belief to the contrary was not to be aired in public.”
“Gross selection bias”
After being contacted by SPUC, the BBC Complaints Team claimed that the “article fairly and accurately represented the new Health Secretary’s views and reflected both sides of the political argument. This was not an article about the rights and wrongs of abortion but about the political debate.”
But SPUC’s Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), said: “The BBC absolutely did not represent the pro-life side of the argument fairly, politically, philosophically or in terms of the facts. By choosing to present one side of the argument, the BBC engaged in a shameless selection bias that will have left readers believing that the BPAS assertions they were reading were statements of truth rather than pro-abortion talking points.
“For example, by repeating the BPAS line that Ms Coffey’s vote against making DIY abortion permanent was “against the advice of leading medical bodies” – without the BBC also citing the numerous reasons supporting Ms Coffey’s decision – the BBC failed to represent the considerable motives for voting against DIY abortion.
“There was no mention of the 86% of GPs in Britain concerned about the risk of coercion because of the DIY abortion scheme, for instance, or the 70% of respondents to the Government consultation on the scheme who wanted it to end immediately, or ambulance call-outs due to DIY home abortion soaring by 64% in 2020.
“These are facts that deserve to be heard but which the BBC failed to mention. Whether by incompetence or by design, the BBC has engaged in a gross selection bias that ultimately denied the British public a full picture of the abortion debate, its key viewpoints and facts.”