BBC doesn't tell you that Guttmacher is a pro-abortion campaign group

On the 8am Radio 4 News today, the BBC presented the latest publication by the pro-abortion organisation, The Guttmacher Institute, as a report by "sexual health experts". A lot of unsubstantiated figures were reeled out to support this so-called expert opinion.

The BBC don't produce transcripts, but here is the text (with my italics).

"Research suggest the number of abortions performed world wide is falling. The study says that there are no reduction in what it calls unsafe abortions carried out in countries where the practice is heavily restricted. Jane Draper reporting. [Jane Draper:] 'Sexual health experts from the Guttmacher institute analysed official figures and data about medical complications which may have arisen from illegal abortions. Researchers found that since the mid 1990s, the number of abortions worldwide has fallen from 45 milliion to 41 million. This they said was due to increased provision in contraception particularly in Eastern Europe and Africa, but they estimate unsafe abortions cause 70,000 deaths, mainly in developing countries. In N.Ireland terminations are still restricted but some women travel to Britain or abroad to end unwanted pregrancies. A group called Comment for Reproductive Ethics, which campaigns for respect for the human embryo said abortion wasn't the answer and it didn't liberate women.'"

Firstly, SPUC are categorical that these figures are false.

The figures used are highly dubious: what is the source of the "offical data" and how is it compiled? How does anyone get statistics on "unsafe" abortions, which are presumably illegal? Yet the Guttmacher have a history of providing these statistics. The numbers on which the report is based are "estimates" by the researchers themselves. To be fair, Draper inserts "they say" as a rather faint parenthesis, but the figures are to all intents and purposes treated as statistical fact.

And left unstated is the fact that the Guttmacher institute is itself a campaigning organisation. As ever, pro-abortion propaganda is represented as objective and scientific, pro-life campaigners as mere moralists. The reference to CORE is a nod towards balance but CORE are described as campaigners, the Guttmacher people as experts. What would a person who hasn't looked into the matter be led to conclude?

Odd that Draper uses CORE,who are more interested in artificial conception, rather than another anti-abortion group: by focusing on "respect for embryo", Draper obscures the point that many abortions take place on foetuses who can be of 6 or 7 months+ gestation, a practice objectionable to many people who don't concede that the embryo is alive. CORE's response seemed generic also: was it a reply to the Guttmacher report or taken from another context?: there's nothing on their website.

It looks to me like Draper has framed the issue as a debate between scientific researchers and anti-abortion ideologues. That the BBC health correspondent, is reporting this news item is an example of how the debate on abortion is expunged of any moral dimension and treated pseudo-scientifically as a health issue.

There is an oblique swipe at Northern Ireland's restrictive laws, which continue to be a target of pro-abortion campaigners, juxtaposed with the estimate of women killed as a result of "unsafe" abortions. The reporter seems to have incorporated Northern Ireland into the news item on her own initiative.

As Robin Aitken says in Can we Trust the BBC?,abortion is one of those issues on where the BBC promotes its own opinions, although it is required to maintain a pretence of objectivity.

Vote for Liberal democrats is unchristian

The Liberal Democrats support the right to abortion as part of party policy after a conference vote in 1992. In doing so, the party stopped being officially neutral on the issue and leaving it to the individual conscience of MPs. This is why David Lord Alton left in the 1980's, he is now a cross-bench MP. To stand as a Liberal Democrat MP or councillor, to even be a member of their party, is to implicitly support a right to abortion.

The logic is clear, the party's policy is in conflict with Catholic teaching; but the bishops are quiet on this. One suspects this is partly due to the influence of liberal ideas in the hierarchy, but a more respectable reason is that the Catholic Church wants to avoid being too involved in party politics.

All very well, but Catholic commentators at least should take on the implications of the irreconcilable difference between Lib Dem policy and the duty of Catholics not to support abortion. It is the same as the Amnesty International case.

Reconciling support for a given party and Christian principles is a difficult issue, given that Christ did not mandate a set of rules to govern our lives. Christian leaders from many denominations argue that the BNP is anti-Christian, probably a counter-productive move. True conservatives, like Peter Hitchens, argue that supporting the BNP is incompatible with Christianity. No-one can accuse him of trying to be "relevant in changing times" or of greasing up to our politically correct masters, something that you can't say for the Catholic or Anglican hierarchies.

The Catholic press spouts the usual pieties. In the May 31, 2009 edition of the Catholic Times Christopher Graffius went through the voting options for good Catholics, starting with the obligatory "I would hope that no Catholic would vote for the racist British National party". Yes, but this isn't an argument: just crying "racist" is looking increasingly inadequate, given the damage that immigration is doing.

He goes further than this though: UKIP is a "dud choice" because "The church has always opposed petty nationalism". So, according to Graffius, supporting unaccountable bureaucracies and showing contempt for referendum results is OK? The Greens "advocate a population policy. A prominent advisor of theirs, Jonathan Porritt, recently backed a two-child limit for families", which is anti-life; I agree with him, but this is not quite the same as advocating abortion, although I'm sure the Greens, with their extreme liberal social policies, support abortion rights.

He continues. The Christian parties are overwhelmingly protestant and exclusive because non-Christians can not stand; I remember a Muslim stood for a Christian party in Scotland, but Graffius may well be right about the Christian party and the Christian Peple's Alliance, whom he uses as an example. But not about the Scottish Christian party".

Of the main parties, the Conservatives, as Graffius says, are no longer allied with Christian Democrats in the European parliament: "You could hold your nose when voting Tory on the basis that it would support Christian Democracy overall". The Christian Democratic parties support Christianity's place in Europe, but in the end they go with the tide. An overview of the debate is here.

Graffius bases his prescriptions on arbitrary reasons, inspired by the pious social-action, right-on version of Christianity that is becoming increasingly prevalent in the Catholic press. This philosophy has taken over "The Universe" entirely.

He doesn't mention Labour or the Liberal Democrats. So presumably these parties don't meet with his disapproval. But since Labour MPs voted overwhelmingly to keep the current abortion laws last year and the Liberal Democrats support abortion as a matter of party policy, forestalling individual choice, I find this rather shocking from a supposedly Catholic-minded commentator in a Catholic paper.

He suggests at the end making a pro-life on the ballot paper, so I don't accuse him of not caring about abortion; however, his silence on the pro-life record of the left-of-centre main parties is symptomatic of the way that the new piety of these social action Christians , while full of pursed-lipped disdain for "petty nationalism" of respectable right-wing parties like UKIP, makes them pass over the anti-Christian nature of the leftist political movements to which they want to subordinate ally the Catholic Church.

Cross-posted on Christianity in the West

Obama and his honorary degree from Notre Dame

Let me add to the criticism by Pat Buchanan of Notre Dame university's decision to give Obama an honorary degree. This hollowing out of Christian faith is not new, and is highlighted in the English context by "Secularisation", Edward Norman's critique of humanist ideas within Anglicanism.

But we need to ask what is the crack that has allowed this evil in. The answer is the way in which the evils of progressive ideology masquerade as good. The Catholic Church's commitment to social justice is interpreted by many as commitment to progressive ideas and politicians, who in the process of (supposedly) helping the poor, promote their own gospel of Rosseau, Voltaire, Marx and Marcuse. And no-one reads the St. John's gospel anymore, they prefer the Jesus-as-very-good-man picture, as selectively gleaned by liberal theologians from the synoptics.

Catholics in the US and UK have traditionally voted for the left due to their economic profile; but the left have betrayed the poor. There is nothing about Obama that makes him particularly just: he supports open immigration, eroding the wages of poorer Americans; he gives tax-payer billions to the bankers, just like the Bush administration, and has filled his economic team with Clinton administration stalwarts; he foists abortion on Africans; he intends to override the constitutional rights of the states to enforce liberal abortion laws on conservative communities, much like the government here wants to do in Northern Ireland. In fact George W. Bush would be more deserving of an honorary degree because of additional expenditure he approved for humanitarian causes in Africa. But that wouldn't fit the script that some Social action Catholics seem to like better than the Bible. They hear the anti-Capitalism and ignore the anti-Catholicism.

Anyone who reads the Catholic papers will know there is a rather naive, anti-capitalist bias. There are many examples, but I shall cite Paul Donovan, who writes weekly for the Universe. In an article straplined "Church's roles is more than administering sacraments" he says that the "Church has withdrawn into itself", partly due to "society's hostility to Catholics", which is fair enough taken at face value, but one senses that the underlying picture he sees is one where "catholics are an excluded minority", rather than seeing anti-catholicism as an ideological hostility, part of the battle of ideas. Authentic Catholicism for him is adherence to the social programmes of the left.

His solution, therefore, is entirely in the realm of social action, which seems to be indistinguishable from what the state or a secular leftist organisation would do. He calls for housing justice, regularisation of undocumented workers, credit unions, churches as bases for the post office. In short, "Churches need to be looking to the needs of their parishioners byond simply delivering the sacraments every week." Donovan doesn't say the sacraments are a waste of time, but by implication he downgrades them.

Even a great theologian like Rowan Williams robustly criticises the failures of the economic system, while being more cautious about the evils of abortion.

Cross-posted on Christianity in the West.

Catholics, the Act of Succession and Evan Harris

Evan Harris, friend to Catholicism, known as Dr Death for his extreme pro-abortion views, wants to scrap the Act of Succession, on the basis that it discriminates against Catholics. This is rather ironic since he believes that Religion (in practice, dissent from failed progressive policies) should give way to "Science" (aka liberal ideology) on matters relating to abortion, euthanasia, the family, education, etc..

We have to put up with the misrepresentation of the Catholic (really the most consistently Conservative) viewpoint on social issues such as the family, abortion, sex education and euthansia; these views are either ignored, or ridiculed. We have the attack on faith-based schooling in the name of social cohesion and British values. Like most people, I don't want teenagers or pre-teenagers to receive that trojan-horse, a value-free education on sex and be lectured on the easy availability of contraception, emergency contraception morning-after pill and abortion.

I would like my children to be educated in the Catholic faith, and be brought up in a Christian environment; such a truly liberal education would help protect them from the culture of death promoted by a combination of Government policy, liberal dogma and commercial profit - and Dr. Harris. Yet, I am supposed to care about the Act of Succession. In any case, liberal morality is destroying the West. The Death of the West really does matter and the Catholic church is fighting it. But I digress.

Returning to the issue, our concern should be the Constitution of Britain, not treating Catholics as yet another minority to be used as a wedge for a liberal attack on our traditions. By "reforming" the Act of Succession, you tinker with the constitution, and in the process may weaken the monarchy, which is no doubt the real intention. It doesn't make any difference to the lives of Catholics, except to make another spiteful and otherwise pointless gesture against the traditions of this country. It of courses matters a lot to the left because that is their stock-in-trade. They say it is an anomaly. So? History is full of anomalies, they are part of our past, the settlement handed down to us by our ancestors - which it is much easier to destroy than to replace. There is a lot of ideology here but no injustice?


Cardinal Keith O' Brien calls it "state-sponsored sectarianism". I guess from a West-Scotland perspective, he could be forgiven for this statement, given the Catholic and Protestants divisions there; but attacking the monarcy won't do much to improve community tensions, as far as I can see. Interestingly, he is referred to as a "critic" rather than by name by BBC Radio 4. Though Cardinal O' Brien is to the left of the Government on nuclear disarmament, immigration and other issues, he was recently demonised by the left for his robust pro-life remarks. For the left, being pro-abortion is an article of faith policy-based evidence evidence-based policy.

The government won't back the private members bill because it is a constitutional quagmire; but true to the jacobin leanings of New Labour, Gordon Brown "is in discussions with the palace", is worried about "exclusion" and says that "there shouldn't be discrimination". His role as progressive world leader means that he must at least pay lip service to this faux equality and diversity issue.