58 minute read
Fifty-five years of fighting for life
A conversation with John Smeaton
John Smeaton, the chief executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, has been involved in the pro-life movement at the national and international level for the past 47 years and this year he will pass on his responsibilities to the next generation. At this special moment, Calx Mariae had the unique opportunity to ask him to reflect on the mission and purpose of the pro-life movement, and also on its limitations.
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John Smeaton studied English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and taught English at a secondary school. He became involved with SPUC, the first pro-life campaigning group to be established anywhere in the world, after graduating from Oxford. He became the national director of SPUC in 1996 and has been at the forefront of campaigns not only against abortion but also euthanasia and same-sex “marriage”. John Smeaton is the vice-president of International Right to Life Federation and a co-founder of Voice of the Family. He and his wife Josephine have four children and six grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
CALX MARIAE: Having dedicated 47 years, almost your entire career to working for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) at the national as well as at the international level, how would you define the pro-life movement? Why does it exist? JOHN SMEATON: The aim of the pro-life movement and the reason for its existence are to oppose and to defeat the idea, which dominates virtually the entire world, that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived; and to create a society in which God’s law “Thou shalt not kill” is not only written into national and international law, it is also upheld and energetically defended by our fellow-citizens.
I must add immediately two further observations: the pro-life movement is part of a much wider and deeper historic crusade for the restoration of Christian civilisation; and, secondly, the aim of the pro-life movement is immeasurably beyond the capacity of the relatively small organisations in various countries which go under the pro-life banner to achieve on their own.
Of necessity, in addition to abortion, we are opposing and seeking to defeat a wide range of related evils – from contraception and in vitro fertilisation, to euthanasia, same-sex “marriage”, relationships and sex education and attacks on parents as the primary educators of their children, all of which serve to undermine the inviolability and value of human life.
These are evils rooted in a revolution, a rebellion against God and His Church, the seeds of which were planted many centuries ago. It’s a revolution which has waxed and waned historically around the world but which, universally, reached a new dramatic climax in the 1960s since when there has been a catastrophic collapse in Christian civilisation and in the recognition of truths universally upheld just a couple of decades before.
The pro-life movement, therefore, is a counter-revolutionary movement and, in order to achieve its aim, its members must be prepared to become not only saints – which everyone is called to be – but martyrs, which opponents of abortion and evils related to abortion are called to be. And even without being martyred, we must joyfully embrace a spirit of sacrifice in order to work towards our goal.
Alan Smith, co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) in 1966, understood the spirit of the age, what the newly-conceived pro-life movement needed to do and the spirit with which to do it. Two days after the House of Commons passed the Third Reading of the Abortion Act on 14 July 1967, he wrote to Elspeth Rhys-Williams (now Elspeth Chowdharay-Best), his fellow co-founder:
“Is it a coincidence that the Commons passed the Third Reading on the 14th of July? As you have observed before the British Establishment is losing faith in itself in the same manner as the ancien régime … We must realise that in the struggle against the Enemy we are no longer the Establishment; we have lost control of the media of communications … Faith can give us an indifference to success or failure in this world but we must always continue to fight. Rather than to go meekly in the tumbrils to the guillotine, it would be preferable to die fighting at the barricades. Heroism in defeat is even more noble than heroism in victory.”
In the conclusion of his letter to his SPUC co-founder of over half a century ago, Alan Smith makes a striking prophecy which, in my opinion, correctly expresses the scale of the challenge facing the prolife movement. He writes:
“… The grim prospects ahead should not hypnotize us into inaction: ‘And there shall be Martyrs and Saints. And if blood of Martyrs is to flow on the steps We must first build the steps; And if the Temple is to be cast down We must first build the Temple.’” (T.S. Eliot, Choruses from The Rock)
Fifty-five years on, Alan Smith remains an active member of SPUC’s Executive Committee and Council.
CM: What have been the biggest changes for the pro-life movement since it all began 55 years ago? JS: There are numerous fundamental changes which have resulted in the pro-life battle extending from fighting against the Abortion Act to fighting against a whole range of threats against human life from conception to natural death as well as threats to the family, the first protector of human life.
Many of these changes emerge from the wider context we are working in; for example, the change in attitude of leaders of the medical profession and leaders of the church towards the inviolable sanctity of human life. In answering your question, therefore, it’s necessary also to look at the bigger picture: the world in which the pro-life movement has to work.
John Smeaton’s former pupils help in SPUC’s new office in Westminster in April 1978. Phyllis Bowman, SPUC’s first national director, is pictured to the left and John Smeaton is seated to her right.
Firstly, let’s consider the medical profession which, as represented by its national bodies, has moved from opposition to the Abortion Act to supporting abortion decriminalisation.
When the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children was founded, Sir John Peel, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), wrote to Elspeth Rhys-Williams, one of the Society’s founders, saying he felt “sure that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists would be extremely interested in sending a representative to serve on the Committee”.1 However, an Abortion Law Reform Association2 spokesman predicted at the time that doctors’ resistance to Parliament’s decision would collapse – and, sure enough, their position became more and more pro-abortion until 50 years later, Professor Lesley Regan, immediate past president of the RCOG, led calls for abortion to be decriminalised and said that abortions should be treated no differently from other “medical procedures” – including something as simple as removing a bunion. (Daily Mail, 16 September 2017).
Another huge change in the socio-cultural environment for the pro-life movement has been ever-increasing curbs on the freedom to spread our message. For thirty to forty years, SPUC’s trained volunteer speakers could scarcely keep up with demand for talks in schools on life and death before birth, involving slide presentations of the development of the child before birth and also the reality of abortion – and providing young people with information on the ill-effects of abortion for mothers, and exposing the false claims made about so-called unwanted children, backstreet abortion, population control and other topics. However, the state’s ever-increasing ideological control of education has greatly limited our access to schoolchildren whilst government legislation requires them to be signposted to contraception and abortion services.
Also, over the past fifty-five years, we have seen legal and political decisions both nationally and at the European levels outlawing health professionals’ right to conscientious objection to participation in abortion and euthanasia, and banning pro-life activists from giving witness outside abortion clinics.
Baroness Sue Ryder of Warsaw signing SPUC’s UK-wide petition calling for the suggested technique of taking eggs from aborted infants to create embryos for infertile women, and for experiments, to be stopped in the Society’s successful campaign against this practice in 1994.
In his important book Abortion Matters, available from SPUC, Dr Anthony McCarthy, SPUC’s director of research and education, writes:
“Universities are witnessing pressure to ban prolife groups whose members wish to engage in serious debate about the moral questions that abortion raises. For example, the Students Association at the University of Strathclyde banned ‘anti-choice groups’ on the grounds that such groups violated the ‘safe space’ of the students. In the US, students at DePaul University were banned from using a pro-life poster proclaiming ‘Unborn Lives Matter’, for fear it might provoke other students.3 DePaul is the largest Catholic university in the USA. “In France in 2016 the Council of State upheld a ban on the television broadcasting of the video ‘Dear Future Mom’. The ban was originally imposed by the French Broadcasting Council because the film featured people with Down’s syndrome smiling and this was ‘likely to disturb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different personal life choices’.4
“In France again, a bill was passed at the end of 2016 to ban websites that ‘exert psychological or moral pressure to discourage recourse to abor-
tion’. The law catches not only websites that are misleading but also those that seek to dissuade women from having an abortion (‘sites ... qui ... cherchent à dissuader les femmes d’avorter’). Website owners caught by this measure could face fines of up to 30,000 euros and prison sentences of up to two years. Quite apart from being an extraordinary attack on freedom of expression in a country famed for proclaiming the importance of liberté, the measure seems in tension with the 1975 French law which – in legalising abortion – called for women to be informed of the alternatives.5
“Back in the UK, an official NHS website encourages pregnant mothers to speak to organisations that provide abortions on a commercial basis, but not to speak to crisis pregnancy centres that are run by pro-life volunteers on a charitable basis. The extraordinary reasoning given is that the latter would not provide impartial advice.”6
Another important change which has occurred has to do with the faith and the faithful. When SPUC was being formed in late 1966, early 1967, there were mistaken efforts to keep Catholics out of the front line of the battle against abortion.
SPUC was the first pro-life campaigning group to be established anywhere in the world. There were no Catholics present at the launch meeting held at the Wig and Pen Club, in The Strand, London, on 11 January 1967. This was a deliberate move on the part of the newly-formed Society as the minutes of the Executive Committee of SPUC held on 17 November 1967 clearly show:
“Lord Barrington [SPUC’s national chairman] suggested that he should write to the Chief Rabbi asking if he were interested in SPUC, and if so if he would like a representative to serve on the Executive. This was agreed, and Miss Court [later Phyllis Bowman] was asked to contact the Quakers. It was decided that Lady Wootton should be invited to join. After discussion, it was agreed that the climate of opinion did not yet allow Roman Catholics to be asked on to the Executive: prejudice was still such that if one were to join, the Society would be labelled a front organisation for the Church of Rome.”
However, within a few years, both the Society, beginning at the local level, as well as the pro-life movement more widely, had become a movement comprised overwhelmingly of Catholics and that remains the case in 2021. Catholics joining SPUC and other pro-life groups was a spontaneous movement of the people; it was both an essential and prophetic development pointing to the reality that the prolife movement is part of a much wider and deeper historic crusade for the restoration of Christian civilisation. There is no way the pro-life movement can bring about the paradigm shift needed to defeat abortion without the Church.
Tragically (truly tragically) keeping out of the front line against abortion was a policy adopted by Cardinal Heenan, the Archbishop of Westminster (1963-1975) and Catholic primate of England and Wales at the time of the passage of the Abortion Act. Last year I met a retired doctor, Dr Stephen Brennan, who was attending a SPUC meeting at which I was speaking in Newcastle upon Tyne, and we spoke about the cardinal. Afterwards, he sent me the following message:
“Dear John,
Thank you and your team for a great day, encouraging as always. That little historical story [I told you] was as follows: As a medical student in London, our University Catholic Chaplain, Fr
Bruce Kent (he left the priesthood later as you will know) took about 20 of us medical students to see Cardinal Heenan one Saturday morning in 1965 or '66 (before the Act). We got a nice glass of sherry! We didn’t say much but listened.
The main two points the Cardinal made were: 1. It would probably be best, as Catholics, not to make too much of a fuss, as this would be likely to increase the support for the David Steel [abortion] Bill … and 2. Anyway, we shouldn’t worry too much, ‘the Doctors won’t let it happen’ (too much faith in the Hippocratic Oath I suppose).” It was a great strategic error on the part of SPUC and Cardinal Heenan to downplay Catholic opposition to David Steel’s abortion bill. The third
reading of the bill on 14 July 1967 was passed by 163 votes in favour to 87 against. 380 MPs failed to vote out of the 630 MPs elected to Parliament. I have no doubt whatsoever that the bill would have been heavily defeated if there had been a concerted effort on the part of the bishops throughout Britain to urge the millions of practising Catholics at that time to write to, or meet, or to telephone their MP. 7
In fairness to Cardinal Heenan, he denounced the Church of England’s committee on the abortion bill in the February 1966 edition of the Westminster Cathedral Chronicle, saying it deliberately “rejects what it recognises to be the traditional Christian view that the killing of the fetus is a form of homicide”. And of David Steel’s abortion bill he said: “Once we take the control of the span of life out of God’s hands we have no principles to guide us … If it is justifiable to kill the fetus which may be born deformed because, for example, the pregnant mother has contracted German measles, it is hard to see why children who manage to be born deaf, blind or otherwise handicapped should not immediately be put to death.”8 Cardinal Heenan’s opposition to abortion in the public square was tragically muted in 1966, but at least when he did say something, he was unequivocal and absolutist. By way of contrast, over the past fifty-five years, Catholic prelates, with notable exceptions, have become less and less visibly opposed to attacks on the sanctity of human life, even to the point of
Dana Rosemary Scallon pictured with John Smeaton at SPUC’s national conference in 1996. Dana, who won the Eurovision song contest in 1970, and was elected to the European Parliament in 1999, led the successful public battle to stop abortion legalisation in Ireland in the 2002 constitutional referendum. co-operating with policies that include abortion and related anti-life, anti-family laws.
Tragically, for example, unequivocal and absolutist opposition to abortion was not the position of the Catholic bishops in Ireland in 1992 and in 2001/2002 as I explained in full in an article in Calx Mariae (no 1, Summer 2018).9 The people of Ireland, in 1992, were invited by their bishops to vote in favour of an intrinsically unjust law which would permit abortion when there was a real and substantial risk to a woman’s life, including a psychological risk. And in 2001, the Irish bishops issued a statement supporting Irish government proposals which, in the words of the late Mr Justice Rory O’Hanlon, a former High Court judge “was contrary to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church” and was “the most serious attack yet witnessed on the integrity of our Constitution” which, he argued would “definitely liberalise Irish abortion law greatly so as to increase abortions in Ireland”. By the grace of God, the people of Ireland voted against both of these abortion proposals – safeguarding unborn children for many more years until the disaster of 2018 when the Irish electorate voted to strip unborn children of legal protection. It was the Catholic bishops of Ireland who had led the way to this disaster by dealing a succession of tragic blows to the formation of the consciences of Irish citizens. Meanwhile, in England and Wales, the Catholic bishops have given the green light to both the abortion policies as well as to the LGBT+ agenda of the British government which are implemented in the legislative changes10 making Relationships Education compulsory in all English primary schools and Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) compulsory in all English secondary schools. The approach taken by the bishops has a long history which has been fully explored in an article by Dr Tom Rogers in Calx Mariae (no 10, Autumn 2020). The Catholic bishops’ support for this new RSE regime is naturally considered of great importance by the British government. Nick Gibb, who was Minister for School Standards, commented in a House of Commons debate on 25 June 2019:
“I am very content that we have secured the support of the Catholic Church, the Church of England and organisations such as Stonewall [a
militant anti-Catholic pro-LGBT body] for the guidance we have created.”
What I have mentioned thus far concerning Catholic prelates in Britain and Ireland is just the tip of the iceberg. Arguably one of the biggest developments over the past half-century to change radically the nature and magnitude of the pro-life battle has been the suppression of parents, by both governments worldwide and Catholic Church leaders worldwide, as the primary educators of their children. Only prayer and fasting asking for divine intervention, combined with heroic witness on the part of parents and the pro-life movement, will be effective in overcoming this catastrophic situation.
CM: Let’s explore parental rights a little more – how in particular does the suppression of parental rights negatively influence the pro-life battle? JS: At the time of the passage of the Abortion Act 1967, the prevailing ethos concerning the role of parents and the family still reflected the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The distinguished US attorney and bioethicist, William L. Saunders Jnr, in a speech at the Doha International Conference for the Family in Qatar in 2005, explained how the UDHR was drafted so that it upholds marriage between a man and a woman, the family founded on marriage, and parents as the primary educators of their children.
Article 26 (3) states: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”. And William Saunders says:
“As article 16 recognised the priority to the state of the family founded upon marriage, article 26 recognises the priority of the wishes of parents regarding the education of their own children
L to R: Joseph Shaw, Latin Mass Society chairman, John Smeaton, SPUC CEO, and James Leatherland, Catholic Man UK chairman, pray at Westminster Cathedral before delivering a letter to Cardinal Nichols challenging the bishops’ support for government legislation on Relationships and Sex Education. September 2020.
over any designs of the state. Remember, per article 16, the State is obligated to protect the family. If the State presumes to usurp the rights of parents to choose the education of their own children, it damages the family, violates its own obligations, and undermines the foundation of a just society and State.”
William Saunders’ important talk went on to explain the historical significance of the Universal Declaration’s insistence on parents as the primary educators of their children. Quoting Professor Mary Ann Glendon, former US ambassador to the Holy See, William Saunders points out that the UDHR’s protection of parents is rooted in the world’s bitter experience of Nazi Germany and was “influenced directly by recollections of the National Socialist regime's efforts to turn Germany's renowned educational system into a mechanism
“By removing parents as the primary educators of their children in the intimate area of human sexuality, powerful governments and the international birth control lobby, funded by those powerful governments with our taxes, are establishing acceptance of contraception and abortion in the darkened hearts and consciences of future generations of adults. This development has radically changed the nature and magnitude of the pro-life battle – with Catholic leaders’ support for what has happened.”
for indoctrinating the young with the government's programme”.
“In other words,” William Saunders comments, “one of the most important lessons drawn by the framers of the Declaration from the experience of the Second World War was that parental choice in education is a fundamental plank of international peace and security.”
However, despite the UDHR, described by the UN as a milestone document in the history of human rights, in recent decades in Britain, our government has been pursuing a policy of providing access to abortion and birth control drugs and devices to children under the age of sixteen without parental knowledge.
In our work at the Human Rights Council, lobbyists for SPUC have often met country delegates from developing nations who were preparing reports for United Nations compliance committees. The Committee on the Rights of the Child is the UN’s compliance committee for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. There is nothing in the Convention on the Rights of the Child that can reasonably be construed as approving abortion or access to abortion for children under the age of consent. However, this does not stop the Compliance Committee from making recommendations promoting access to abortion for children under the age of consent without parents’ knowledge or consent. Such recommendations are implemented in countries worldwide.
The Coalition in Defence of Primary Educators, led by Catholic Man UK, the Latin Mass Society and SPUC, make reparation in Walsingham, the great English Marian shrine, for the bishops’ support for compulsory relationships and sex education. December 2019.
These policies have been championed by the Catholic bishops in Britain. In Catholic schools in England and Wales, for example, and with the cooperation of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, children are given access to abortion and contraception without parents’ knowledge or consent – a fact SPUC has been reporting to the highest officials in Rome for many years.
In the Calx Mariae article to which I referred earlier, Dr Tom Rogers explains in detail the exact nature of the Catholic bishops’ current support for the British government on these matters. The final (June 2019) RSE Guidance and Regulations,
backed by the bishops, includes the promotion of abortion, contraception and facilitation of underage sex. Secondary school children should be provided with “the facts about the full range of contraceptive choices, efficacy and options available”, and signposted as to where and how to obtain abortion and contraception services without parental knowledge or consent. Carrying an unborn child to term is presented as simply one of the possible “choices” when pregnant, alongside that of having an abortion – “about which pupils should receive medically and legally accurate impartial information”.
Government policies removing the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children has also received significant support from Pope Francis. During a flight to Rome from Panama in 2019, Pope Francis told reporters: “I believe that we must provide sex education in schools”.
In the Pope’s call for classroom sex education, he went on to mention parents, but in a somewhat negative way. The Pope said “the ideal” is “to begin at home, with the parents”. But, he added, this is “not always possible”, either because of the family situation or because parents “don’t know how” to teach their children about human sexuality. “The school makes up for this,” he said, adding that if sex education is not provided the “void” will be “filled by any ideology”.
In saying this, Pope Francis ignored the geopolitical reality known, to one extent or another, by parents worldwide – that, in their sex education classes, schools, both non-Catholic and Catholic, are communicating to children the State’s and the international pro-abortion lobby’s ideology on matters relating to human sexuality. And this ideology deliberately seeks to exclude parents’ rights and responsibilities towards their children.
The Pope also promoted sex education in a sub-section of chapter 7 of his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, published in 2016. He does so without a single reference in that chapter to parents, albeit parental rights are mentioned earlier in another context. And he does so without giving clear warning of the contraception and abortion agenda of the sex education programmes which prevail worldwide in our children’s schools, including in Catholic schools.
On 24 October 2015, 94 per cent of the bishops attending the Ordinary Synod of the Family in Rome voted to approve a paragraph in the final report which rejects the right of parents to choose to be the sole educators of their children in sexual matters. The sentence, in paragraph 58 of the document, reads:
“The family, while maintaining its primary space in education (cf. Gravissimum Educationis, 3), cannot be the only place for teaching sexuality.”
This paragraph – and Pope Francis’s position – is directly contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church.
In his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (10 January 1890), on the chief duties of Christians as citizens, Pope Leo XIII teaches:
“By nature, parents have a right to the training of their children, but with this added duty that the education and instruction of the child be in accord with the end for which by God’s blessing it was begotten. Therefore it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, and to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty, and above all to refuse to send them to those schools in which there is danger of imbibing the deadly poison of impiety.”
By removing parents as the primary educators of their children in the intimate area of human sexuality, powerful governments and the international birth control lobby, funded by those powerful governments with our taxes, are establishing acceptance of contraception and abortion in the darkened hearts and consciences of future generations of adults. As I said earlier, this development has radically changed the nature and magnitude of the pro-life battle – with Catholic leaders’ support for what has happened making the task of the pro-life movement virtually impossible without heroic witness on the part of parents and the pro-life movement combined with earnest prayer, fasting for divine intervention.
CM: You have repeatedly referred to governments giving children access to contraception, indicating clearly that contraception somehow feeds the abortion industry. Has this always been the prevailing view in the pro-life movement? JS: Certainly not. A major international figure in the early years of the pro-life movement would frequently say to me: “I don’t mind if a woman takes contraception until it comes out of her ears – that’s doing what she likes with her own body. But abortion kills another person’s body, the body of the unborn child.”
Nowadays, by way of contrast, more and more pro-life leaders are studying the empirical evidence which shows that one of the greatest catalysts of the spread of abortion has been the abandonment of the natural law relating to human sexuality and sexual ethics. Many of them have become supporters of Voice of the Family, the publisher of Calx Mariae.
In her book, Adam and Eve after the Pill – Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, Mary Eberstadt, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, describes the central teaching of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (25 July 1968) on the regulation of birth, as “perhaps the most unfashionable, unwanted, and ubiquitously deplored moral teaching on earth”. She then goes on to show that the teaching enshrined in Humanae Vitae is in fact the “most thoroughly vindicated” moral teaching on earth “by the accumulation of secular, empirical, post-revolutionary fact”. In this connection, Mary Eberstadt cites Nobel-Prize winning economist George Akerlof. In a 1996 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Akerlof explains “why the sexual revolution, contrary to common prediction …[has] led to an increase in illegitimacy and abortion”. Mary Eberstadt in Adam and Eve after the Pill also says: “The years since Humanae Vitae have … vindicated the encyclical’s fear that governments would use the new contraceptive technology coercively”.
In Humanae Vitae Pope Paul VI predicted that coercive birth control by governments would result from couples’ decisions in the privacy of their married lives to separate the procreative and unitive ends of the marriage act. When we consider the fulfilment of this papal prediction, our minds naturally turn to China or to India or to other countries whose cruel policies are well known throughout the world. However, we should also think of our own countries: nations in which our pro-life movement has taken root – in the West, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Once again, I refer to anti-life sex education programmes which give schoolchildren access to contraception and abortion and eliminate the role of parents as the primary educators and protectors of their children. These programmes are intended to be a form of coercion on our families.
After two billion abortions and rising, the greatest slaughter in recorded human history, many pro-life leaders have taken on board the extent to which the separation of the procreative and unitive ends of the conjugal act has been a catalyst for the culture of death, advancing in every nation on earth:
• through contraceptive drugs and devices which, other than barrier methods, according to the manufacturers, can cause early abortions in their modes of action; • through in-vitro fertilisation, which involves the instrumentalisation of the human embryo and the destruction or loss of up to 23 human embryos for every one baby born alive; • through same-sex marriage which, amongst many other things, makes it virtually impossible for the pro-life movement to oppose in-vitro fertilisation without being seen as the enemy of those with homosexual inclinations who demand the so-called right to a child through IVF procedures; and • through sex education, so relentlessly promoted by powerful Western nations, and by tax-funded non-governmental organisations, and, tragically and increasingly, by the surrender of the leadership of the Catholic Church – a surrender which is so completely devastating for our families.
CM: There are so many issues you have mentioned: abortion, contraception, IVF, sex education, parental rights, euthanasia – and then there are other issues, such as biomedical experimentation and research using human embryos, organ donation, brain death. Is there not a bit too much on the pro-life plate? Would it not be better to choose our battles and concentrate on a single issue in order to gather maximum support and success, instead of putting it all together? JS: As I mentioned earlier, the pro-life movement is part of a much wider and deeper historic crusade
Two hundred young people attended SPUC’s 50th anniversary youth weekend conference in 2017 to hear inspiring international speakers, including Dr Anthony Levatino, a former abortionist.
for the restoration of Christian civilisation. Each pro-life group has a specific part to play in that crusade and how important our part has been, we will only know at the last judgment.
There are only so many of us in the pro-life movement. Resources are extremely limited. Different groups will focus on different battles according to their capacity and calling.
Abortion is clearly the number one issue for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children as its name and as its long history show. However, it is vital for pro-life groups and individuals to remain constantly aware of how an issue like relationships and sex education (RSE) relates directly to our battle against abortion – since those campaigning for RSE have as their number one priority giving young people in school access to abortion and contraception, as I have explained earlier. Equally, we ignore the link between abortion and contraception at unborn children’s peril. All contraceptive drugs and devices, other than condoms, have, as one of their modes of operation, stopping the human embryo from implanting in the lining of the womb – thus killing the unborn child. Also, the contraceptive mentality itself is fuelling the abortion industry because contraception encourages sexual behaviour where children become “unwanted”, if one was to use that awful word. And when contraception fails, abortion is sought. In countries globally we have seen that contraception becoming more available did not reduce, but significantly increased the number of abortions. Euthanasia is also linked to abortion through the same mentality: if it is acceptable to kill “unwanted” or sick children before they are born, it is only a matter of time before killing elderly and sick people becomes acceptable in society.
What pro-life groups urgently need to do, whilst focusing on their particular issue, be it abortion or something else, is to keep their supporters as well informed as possible on what is happening on related issues. We are in the middle of an all-out war against life. We must keep our supporters posted on what our enemies are achieving on other fronts.
How can we not warn them, for example, of the danger of their being euthanatized in British hospitals if they become incapacitated? A leading pro-life doctor told me recently that that will certainly happen to us if we become incapacitated and go into hospital in Britain today. We must equip people with the relevant information about what action to take now, well in advance, to safeguard their life and the lives of those dear to them. In SPUC’s case, on certain occasions, we have found it necessary to wage all-out battles on matters which, although they appear to be separate issues, in reality, are closely related to our number one priority of protecting unborn children. The battle against relationships and sex education is one such issue.
Another example is that in 2011 SPUC decided to fight against same-sex “marriage” legislation as a pro-life organisation. Statistical evidence on abortion clearly shows that marriage as an institution protects children, both born and unborn; same-sex “marriage” represents an attempt to redefine marriage, thus undermining marriage and family life, as a growing body of academic research clearly shows. It is this undermining that lessens the protection for unborn children that true marriage provides.
Legalising “same-sex marriage” is not a question of being kind to people with same-sex attraction and letting them get married if they want to. It is a question of the destruction of the family, the oldest human institution in the world, which protects the mental and physical wellbeing of men, women and children. No other grouping offers such a high level of security and stability that human beings need to flourish. Research shows overwhelmingly that children growing up within marriage do better in terms of health, educational success, happiness, careers and their own marriages. It is precisely because children matter, that real marriage between one man and one woman matters so much.
British Government statistics show that in the UK children conceived outside of marriage are 4 to 5 times more likely to be aborted than those conceived within marriage. SPUC’s experience is that we simply cannot afford to ignore other issues which are linked in one way or another with abortion. Yes, we lost the battle against legalised same-sex “marriage” but it was vital to fight it. Laws are powerful but so are ideas. Through our grassroots and national campaign against this wicked legislation, which deprives children of a father or a mother, we have kept alive within society an understanding of the truth about human nature and about the truth and meaning of human sexuality. As Pope John Paul II memorably put it in Evangelium Vitae, number 97:
“In particular, there is a need for education about the value of life from its very origins. It is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not help the young to accept and experience sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection. Sexuality, which enriches the whole person, ‘manifests its inmost meaning in leading the person to the gift of self in love’. The trivialization of sexuality is among the principal factors which have led to contempt for new life. Only a true love is able to protect life. There can be no avoiding the duty to offer, especially to adolescents and young adults, an authentic education in sexuality and in love, an education which involves training in chastity as a virtue which fosters personal maturity and makes one capable of respecting the ‘spousal’ meaning of the body.”
CM: What do you consider the most serious mistakes that have been made in the pro-life battle? JS: If we want to protect the unborn from abortion, the practice of campaigning for laws which expressly permit the killing of certain unborn children needs to be completely abandoned: for example, laws which permit unborn children to be killed in the case of rape, or disability, or before the human heart begins to beat.
A law which permits the killing of certain unborn children is not a just law. It is an unjust law which, in the words of St Thomas Aquinas “ceases to be a law and becomes instead an act of violence”.11 Pope John Paul II in this connection, citing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion, said:
“In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it’.”12
The meaning of this statement quoted in Evangelium Vitae (no 73) is 100 per cent clear, and yet during the past fifty years, pro-life leaders, myself included, have backed legislation which permits abortion in certain circumstances on the basis that such legislation is an improvement on an existing law and will save lives. Our pro-life movement must stop backing unjust laws or “acts of violence” as St Thomas Aquinas calls them. Doing so sends the message to friends and opponents alike that abortion can be the right thing to do. Is it not likely that one of the reasons why the evil of abortion is so overwhelm-
ingly accepted in particular circumstances by our fellow citizens, including our fellow Catholics, is that pro-life groups themselves have almost universally been prepared to accept legalised abortion in certain circumstances?
Many of us have justified our campaigns in support of unjust laws by quoting the very next paragraph in section 73 of Evangelium Vitae, where Pope John Paul II famously wrote:
“A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on … In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.”
For over 25 years perhaps the majority of pro-life leaders have interpreted this paragraph as meaning that politicians may vote for, and campaigners may campaign for, laws which of themselves expressly permit abortions. But this is contrary to reason. In the paragraph immediately preceding this one, Pope John Paul II wrote:
“In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is
John Smeaton meets Pope John Paul II at a gathering of pro-life leaders who fought successfully at the 1994 UN Cairo conference on population and development against an international agreement calling for abortion on demand worldwide.
therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it.”
According to Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, “the principle (or law) of non-contradiction is the firmest … without the principle of non-contradiction we could not know anything that we do know”.13 On the basis of the principle of non-contradiction, therefore, it is not possible for this statement to mean both one can vote for an unjust law and one cannot vote for an unjust law – on the basis of one’s motives in doing so or for any other reason.
In other words, pro-life leaders and philosophers need to stop tying themselves up in knots trying to work out what Pope John Paul II meant when he wrote about limiting the harm of existing legislation; instead, we should simply recognise the fact that the constant, unchanging and unchangeable truth
“As soon as we concede the principle that we must never carry out abortions, whatever the circumstances, we are lost spiritually, morally and politically... Once we go down this road, we start to think that moral absolutes do not matter so much – that the Church’s teaching does not matter so much, just as long as we can stop some abortions. And finally, we and our campaigns will not matter so much.”
taught by the Catholic Church is that an unjust law ceases to be a law at all and becomes instead an act of violence for which it is never permissible to campaign or vote for.
Imagine it was lawful in our countries to kill the children of Catholic parents or to kill the children of Muslim parents. Imagine a member of your parliament put forward legislation to stop the killing of white Catholic children but which authorised the killing of black Catholic children. It would clearly be wrong to vote for such a law and to campaign for such a law, however many lives, allegedly, such a law would save.
Another fundamental error made by many prolife leaders is committed by those who argue that it is not abortion to remove deliberately a “pre-viable” baby from his or her mother’s womb, such as by inducing labour pre-viability. Now, what is intended here definitely constitutes an assault on the baby: an assault which kills that child. The assault is intended, even if death as such is not. This is not an operation targeted just on the mother – it is very deliberately targeted on the baby and the baby’s own tissues. It is not like an ectopic pregnancy operation where the operation is (or should be) targeted on the damaged tube of the mother which is removed, affecting the baby as a mere side-effect.
This is not just my opinion. It is the position of the Catholic Church – and a truth of the natural moral law binding on all.
In 1988, the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts was asked the following question: “Whether abortion, as per canon 1398, is to be understood only with reference to the expulsion of an immature fetus, or also with reference to the killing of the said fetus, by whatever means it may be accomplished, and at whatever time, from the moment of conception.”
And the Pontifical Council’s reply, officially approved by Pope John Paul II, made clear in 1988 that a person is equally guilty of the crime of abortion if they either remove an unborn child from his or her mother before viability or kill an unborn child by other means. Deliberate removal of babies before they can survive outside the womb is morally wrong. That is the teaching of the Church and has been stated explicitly for well over a hundred years. Our pro-life movement must be opposed to all abortions – never ever, as I have said, promoting or tolerating any form of abortion, even if we think it may save a mother’s life. As soon as we concede the principle that we must never carry out abortions, whatever the circumstances, we are lost spiritually, morally and politically. We would not kill a mother to save her baby. We would not lethally assault a mother to save her baby. Nor should we assault a baby to save the mother. Once we go down this road, we start to think that moral absolutes do not matter so much – that the Church’s teaching does not matter so much, just as long as we can stop some abortions. And finally, we and our campaigns will not matter so much.
What I am saying is not a counsel of despair as far as pro-life law-making is concerned. There are many ways of seeking to limit the harm of existing
legislation which do not involve voting for an “act of violence” as St Thomas Aquinas puts it. I recommend Dr Colin Harte’s book Changing Unjust Laws Justly for further reflections in this fundamentally important area.
Above all, we must remember that our Parliaments, our Legislative Assemblies, our Houses of Congresses will not change laws which permit the destruction of unborn children until the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens have been changed – and only an unequivocal witness to the sanctity of innocent human life can succeed in convincing our fellow citizens of the inherent evil of abortion. If instead, our witness to the world is that direct abortion can be justified in certain circumstances, it is no longer treated as an inherent evil and we will convince no one, least of all legislators, to stop the killing.
CM: Can you point to any victories SPUC has won as examples of success in the pro-life movement? JS: Every baby’s life saved and mother’s health and happiness spared from abortion is a victory. I pay tribute to the extraordinary work of the pro-life caring organisations, too many to mention, which work day and night providing selfless help to mothers with whom they make contact through their courageous witness and promotion of their services. And it is courageous, even heroic work they do, as powerful media organisations endeavour to entrap dedicated
John Smeaton lobbies at the UN Cairo conference (1994) where he led a worldwide team of 200 pro-life leaders successfully campaigning against an international agreement calling for global abortion on demand. volunteers and experienced professionals as they try to reach out to women experiencing acute difficulties of one kind or another.
SPUC’s political, academic and educational work, plus our legal interventions, involve much unglamorous labour – not least at the local level by our army of volunteers who lobby MPs, traipse round their neighbourhoods giving out our information, speaking in schools, holding “pro-life chains” of witness, and an endless round of other tasks.
Very rarely, but every now and then, it is as though the terrifying reality of abortion simultaneously becomes very clear to a significant number of people living in the UK and, as a consequence, SPUC has been able to take decisive political action because of popular revulsion towards the killing of unborn children. Those of mature years and long memories in SPUC will recall certain occasions over the past 55 years when the consciences of our fellow citizens have been deeply stirred by some major development in Parliament or in the courts.
For example, in 1994, some doctors in Britain launched a campaign to be allowed to develop techniques for taking eggs or ovaries from aborted infants to create babies for childless women. Remarkably, for once, public revulsion to such a grotesque practice was widely reported by the media and the views of the pro-life movement were given major publicity. From January 1994 until the middle of summer, SPUC led a massive national effort to rally public opinion against the creation of babies from the eggs of aborted infants. Firstly, we launched a public petition campaign and gathered 500,000 names against the practice. Next, we distributed nearly a million leaflets to households across Britain and roused churches nationwide. As a result, Parliament was swamped with a protest unlike anything it had ever seen according to politicians at that time. Tens of thousands of letters and telephone calls to Parliament sent a message to politicians and the message was not ignored. The House of Lords, following a vote in the House of Commons, provided the pro-life movement with an historic victory when it voted by 57 to 35 to outlaw the use of eggs from aborted girls in creating embryos for implantation into infertile women.
Bear in mind how extraordinary and unexpected a development this was. Only three years after Parliament had voted by a massive majority in favour of destructive human embryo experimentation, despite SPUC’s campaigning efforts, the Society found itself in a position to use its decades of campaigning and political experience to rally public opinion to get a law passed by Parliament to stop in its tracks the exploitation of little girls killed in the womb. Against all the odds, as we pointed out at the time, “we had won an important legislative victory on the sanctity of human life” because a pro-life chord had been struck in the hearts of ordinary people and SPUC seized the moment with the result that, for once, our pro-life cause was able to win the day.
I believe, and I know from experience, that in their heart of hearts the British people are revolted by abortion, by the killing of helpless tiny children in their mothers’ wombs.
What we did in 1994, was the result of building a peaceful army of door-to-door and church door educational activists throughout the country, and (on the basis of solid research and clear briefings for supporters and politicians) launching swift, timely, well-judged political action when a good opportunity presented itself.
Using such an approach, in 2008, SPUC defeated attempts by the pro-abortion lobby effectively to decriminalise abortion when our opponents were poised to remove virtually all remaining protection for unborn children during the passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.
Seizing the moment and using such an approach, in 2010, SPUC successfully halted attempts to make relationships and sex education compulsory but, tragically, that historic battle was lost in 2018 when the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales backed the government’s legislation.
And in 2015, using the same approach, SPUC in concert with other pro-life groups and church leaders, inflicted a significant defeat on the euthanasia lobby in the House of Commons. MPs voted by 330 to 118 to reject Rob Marris MP’s bill to enlist doctors to assist suicide for certain people. The vote of 330 represents an absolute majority of MPs.
What SPUC did in 1994, in 2008, 2010 and in 2015 in Britain, we also did in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland.
Some of the pro-life movement’s and SPUC’s greatest historical achievements have been in Ireland, namely constitutional protection for unborn children in the Republic of Ireland in 1982, where Phyllis Bowman, my predecessor, played such an important role, and, in Northern Ireland, where there was over 50 years of successful resistance to pro-abortion legislation in a part of the world which is constitutionally part of the UK, a nation that promotes legalised abortion throughout the world. What a scandal this was for the pro-abortion lobby in the UK: the nation which is the home of the headquarters of International Planned Parenthood Federation, the biggest abortion-promoting organisation in the world!
And amongst our many victories in the prolife battle in Northern Ireland was our defeat of the British Government in the courts in 2009 and 2010. Jim Wells, a former minister of health and the longest ever serving Democratic Unionist Party Member of the Legislative Assembly, expressed the importance of SPUC’s achievement like this: “If the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) had done nothing else in its 45-year history than defeat Northern Ireland’s health department abortion guidance in the high court, that achievement alone would have justified its existence. I ad-
Jim Wells MLA, former health minister and deputy speaker of Northern Ireland Assembly, opens the new SPUC office in central Belfast in 2019. Also attending were Baroness Nuala O'Loan, Jim Shannon, DUP MP for Strangford, Alban Magginness, the former SDLP MLA, Christopher Stallford, DUP MLA for South Belfast, Pat Convery and Declan Boyle, independent Irish nationalist councillors on Belfast City Council and Declan O'Loan, SDLP, a member of Ballymena Borough Council.
mire the courage SPUC had in defending in the high court Northern Ireland’s legal prohibition of abortion. The action could have destroyed SPUC financially. However, if SPUC had not taken the case, our meeting today would be occurring in a very different atmosphere and environment.” Jim Wells said that SPUC was the “cavalry riding over the hill” safeguarding Northern Ireland from the Department of Health’s attempt to widen the practice of abortion. By the grace of God, SPUC’s actions have saved tens of thousands of lives, albeit the British Government and Parliament have now tragically imposed barbaric abortion legislation on the Province – legislation which not a single Northern Ireland politician voted to introduce.
Another major legal victory was in 2011, in what became known as the “bedroom abortions” case, legal arguments submitted by SPUC’s lawyers helped to prevent a change in the law that would have allowed abortions to take place in the home. Mr Justice Supperstone, when making his ruling, cited the argument put forward by SPUC’s lawyers on the advice of Paul Tully, SPUC’s long-serving general secretary at the time. Sadly the government introduced abortion at home in 2018 – but tens of thousands of lives were saved during those precious seven years.
All these victories show that we in the pro-life movement can slow things down, but ultimately, without the help of the Church, the culture of life cannot advance.
CM: So what is the role of religion and Catholicism in the pro-life movement? Should it be kept out of the pro-life battle? JS: On the contrary, pro-life organisations and the wider community must be fortified by unequivocal, unyielding voices of Catholic Church officials and bishops throughout the world.
The pro-life movement must surely show humility. Many of the moral principles by which people have lived throughout virtually the whole of human history are being systematically outlawed by the legislatures of powerful nations and unjust laws are being all but imposed on less powerful nations and States worldwide: think of the moral law that parents are the primary educators of their children; or of moral laws governing sexual behaviour; or of the increasingly successful efforts, in relation to the sanctity of human life, to outlaw medical professionals’ conscientious objection to abortion and euthanasia.
What’s more: those same moral laws are being rejected in ordinary families worldwide, and the code of morality by which the overwhelming majority of people have lived throughout the history of Christendom is being transformed, including within our own Catholic communities and families, especially on matters relating to the sanctity of human life and sexual ethics. Think, for example, of the widespread acceptance amongst our Catholic families of cohabitation, of the acceptance or refusal to criticise homosexual relationships, of the acceptance of birth control including abortifacient birth control, of the acceptance of legalised abortion in certain circumstances, of the acceptance of explicit sex education in schools, and of in vitro fertilisation and euthanasia.
Pro-life organisations need urgently to be reinforced by the prophetic and unequivocal voices of bishops throughout the world faithfully preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ – for two reasons: because without Christ we cannot do anything; and because the full Gospel message about the truth and meaning of human sexuality and the sanctity of human life, teaching which is also part of the natural law written on all human hearts, is nowhere more fully spelt out than in the teaching of the Church.
To my good pro-life colleagues who argue that we should keep the Church out of the pro-life battle, I respectfully put a variation of St Peter’s question to Our Blessed Lord: To whom shall we go? The Church has the words of eternal life.
In 2014 I had the privilege of addressing the Catholic bishops of Nigeria in Abuja. I told them:
“Bishops have a unique apostolic moral power, to preach the Gospel of Life. I was strongly reminded of the unique apostolic moral power of the bishops recently when I listened at Mass on the Feast of the Ascension, to Christ’s last words to the apostles on earth, when, according to St Matthew: ‘Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations …
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.’” “These words were addressed to the apostles and they are meant, above all, for the successors of the apostles. Bishops have a charism bestowed on them by Jesus Christ just before His Ascension. That’s why Pope John Paul II emphasised in Evangelium Vitae: ‘Bishops ... are the first ones called to be untiring preachers of the Gospel of life’ – because when you speak the Gospel truth in love, your words reverberate with authority, both in the hearts of the faithful and in the hearts of people who do not know Christ – just as Christ’s did.”
Of course, there is a terrifying paradox here. Never before has the world needed the authority of the church founded by Christ so much to save it from complete disaster. And never before has the church founded by Christ appeared to be less visible. The hungry sheep look up and are not fed in the overwhelming majority of our home dioceses or by the Vatican authorities. If I have one prayer only as I approach retirement as SPUC’s CEO, it is that, by the grace of God and through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, there will be a miraculous transformation of bishops throughout the world which will set the pro-life movement on fire.
Britain is a protestant country where the culture of death has taken centre stage and where Boris Johnson, a strongly pro-abortion prime minister is in power. I believe that even in protestant Britain if we had one good bishop proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, one good bishop proclaiming the truth about human sexuality if we had one good bishop preaching and urging teachers and parents to train young people in the virtue of chastity, teaching people about the cruelty and injustice of abortion … I believe that this one good bishop could do more in 47 days to end abortion than I have done in 47 years. Jesus Christ astonished people because he spoke with power – and he has passed on that gift to the apostles and to the bishops of our day, the successors of the apostles.
Albeit, as the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children’s chief executive, I lead a non-confessional group, I have never hidden my Catholic faith during the years working for the Society. There is no reason why any pro-lifer should do so.
Indeed, there is something even more precious than the sanctity of human life, and that is the divine life truly present in the Holy Eucharist in Jesus Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Our greatest treasure on earth is the Blessed Sacrament.
Tragically, just as it is impossible to number the unborn children – made in the image and likeness of God – killed worldwide not only under permissive abortion legislation, but also those killed as a result of abortifacient contraceptive drugs and devices, and through IVF procedures, it is also impossible to calculate the desecrations of the Body of Christ in the sacrilegious treatment of the Holy Eucharist brought about by the practice of Communion in the hand.
The truth about the sanctity of human life before birth cannot triumph without the recognition of the truth about Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Only when we restore the understanding of the sanctity of divine life present in the Holy Eucharist and act accordingly, will we recover the proper understanding of the sanctity of human life.
CM: What should the pro-life movement say and do about abortion-tainted vaccines? JS: The pro-life movement must seek, in every way, to intensify its battle against legalised abortion. That is both the appropriate moral and the appropriate practical response to the terrifying reality of not only abortion-tainted vaccines but also abortion-tainted everyday medications taken by more or less everybody who is alive today. Readers of this issue of Calx Mariae can see what some of those medications are in an article which addresses the most frequent moral questions concerning abortion-tainted vaccines. (See page 3)
And we need to urge our bishops to take the lead in this. It is not enough for our bishops to reassure Catholics and people generally that it is not sinful to take abortion-tainted vaccines – just as it is not sinful to take abortion-tainted medications. They should be using the opportunity provided by the Covid pandemic, and the unprecedented public awareness of the evil use of the remains of aborted
babies in the creation of various medical products, to urge the faithful and all men and women of goodwill to call for an end to legalised abortion and the industries legalised abortion has spawned.
The appalling phenomenon of abortion-tainted vaccines and medications are the fruit of the culture of death. And, as I explained earlier there is no way, humanly speaking, that pro-life groups on our own can reverse or move on from this great paradigm shift towards the culture of death in which our children live and breathe.
For very many years, in talks, blog posts, and articles in pro-life and Catholic journals, I have been calling on church leaders to take the lead in the pro-life battle. Instead, they not only sit on the sidelines, Catholic leaders, including the pope and the bishops of England and Wales, have actually taken the side of the pro-death lobby.
We urgently need to call on church leaders to form the consciences of the Catholic faithful on the teaching of the Church on the sanctity of human life. Their failure to do so has led our health services worldwide to be dominated by the culture of death. The bishops need to fight to make abortion illegal. Church leaders need to call on governments and industry to stop exploiting the unborn in producing medications and vaccines which may be needed by every person on earth at some stage in their lives.
CM: What hope do you have for the future? JS: The pro-life movement has, over the decades, become more firmly established, professional and accomplished in its work in many diverse spheres of activity in various nations, including landmark academic research and educational initiatives, and securing important political and legal victories, resulting in lives saved and women and families given life-changing assistance.
Despite the many threats and apparently overwhelming setbacks, the pro-life movement appears to be poised in 2021 to grow immensely in numbers, in influence, and in its strategic planning, including building ever-closer cooperation with orthodox members and leaders of the Catholic Church.
I am delighted that the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, as I retire as CEO, will be in very good hands to take our pro-life witness forward in the right way, based not only on what has been learned over the decades but also based on, and energised by, fresh ideas in order to carry out our campaigns more effectively.
There has never been a better time for the lay faithful to spread the Gospel of Life – encouraged by the rare exceptional bishops who, as faithful successors of the apostles, sacrifice the respect of their peers by courageously handing on the teaching of Christ.
In an entirely different and secular context, the English poet John Milton wrote: “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed”. The hungry sheep are all around us. At this time when so many are disturbed by US politics and its possible consequences for life and for the family, as well as by historically unprecedented draconian Covid restrictions of freedom imposed in apparently every country throughout the world – now is the time for the pro-life movement to come out fighting and proclaiming the pro-life message in its fullness, namely that:
• A human being, made in the image and likeness of God from the moment of conception, is sacred and each and every human life is called to serve God in this life, from conception until natural death, and be happy with Him in the next. • Marriage, the exclusive, life-long union of one man and one woman, is the foundation of a
stable and flourishing society and is the greatest protector of children, born and unborn. • Marriage and the protection for human life before birth is mortally wounded by giving legal recognition to same-sex unions. • The procreative and unitive ends of the conjugal act cannot licitly be separated; the rejection of this truth lies at the root of modern attacks on life and the family. • Parents are the primary educators of their children and the protection of this right is essential for building a new “culture of life”.
Now is the time for Catholics and pro-life people of all faiths and none to begin fearlessly to proclaim the whole truth about the sanctity of human life, marriage and the family.
Endnotes:
1. Letter from Sir John Peel in SPUC’s archive. 2. The Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA) was founded in 1935 for the legalisation of abortion. 3. Eugene Volokh, “DePaul University forbids College Republicans’ posting of ‘Unborn Lives Matter’ poster”, The Washington Post, 24 Oct 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh conspiracy/wp/2016/10/24/depaul-university-forbids-college-republicans-posting-of-unborn-lives-matter-poster/?utm_term=. a25f3584a0cf 4. Renate Lindeman, “C_E_N_S_O_R_E_D: video ‘Dear Future Mom’”, HuffPost News, 18 Nov 2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/c-e-n-s-o-r-e-dvideo-dear-future-mom_us_582f8e6fe4b0d28e55214ef6 5. Theodore Bunker, “New French Law Bans Pro-Life Websites That Appear Neutral”, Newsmax, 7 Dec 2016, https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/French-LawBans-Pro-Life/2016/12/07/id/762667/; For a report in French, see http://www. marianne.net/ivg-les-senateurs-adoptent-penalisation-sites-web-faisant-desinformation-100246662.html 6. See: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/abortion/Pages/Introduction.aspx 7. The potential social influence of the Catholics in the 1960s can be seen in the fact that 12% of marriages in England and Wales took place in a Catholic Church (compared with 6% in 2010). 8. Cardinal Heenan’s words proved to be prophetic. In a paper entitled “Infanticide” published in Utilitas, a philosophy journal in 2007, Jeff McMahon, a professor of philosophy at Oxford University endorsed infanticide as an option in certain circumstances. He writes: “The common view that infanticide is morally different in kind from abortion, is difficult to defend, given that there can be no intrinsic differences between a viable fetus and a newborn infant of the same age (calculating age from conception rather than from birth). To achieve consistency, we may need to abandon either the view that post-viability abortions can be justified, even to avert a significant harm to the pregnant woman or the view that infanticide is morally just as serious as the killing of an older child or adult”. 9. John Smeaton, “A true understanding of conscience: the necessity for heroic witness on the part of the pro-life and pro-family movement”, Calx Mariae, Summer 2018, pp 26-31. 10. Children and Social Work Act 2017. 11. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 93, a. 3, ad 2um. 12. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Procured Abortion (no 98), 18 November 1974, No. 22: AAS 66 (1974), 744. 13. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Aristotle on Non-Contradiction: http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-noncontradiction/
