NewsCore

– May 19, 2010

Abortion Advertisement to Air on

British TV for First Time

An advertisement offering abortion services will air for the first time on British television next week.

An advertisement offering abortion services will air for the first time on British television next week, The Times of London reported Thursday.

Marie Stopes International, a British charity that carries out about 65,000 abortions a year, said that it wanted to encourage people to speak more openly about abortion, and reach the widest possible audience with information about its services.

However, the move sparked a debate with anti-abortion campaigners who accused the charity of breaking advertising codes to “sell abortion” as if it were a consumer product. They said that they were considering what action to take to prevent further screenings.

The first advertisement will run at 10:10 p.m. on Channel 4 on Monday and the campaign will continue until the end of next month. The number of abortions in Britain has risen steadily since the Abortion Act in 1967 to 195,300 a year. Currently, about one in three women will have an abortion.

The service is offered to all women up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, with the permission of two doctors, and is free on the NHS. About half of the 42,000 teenage pregnancies each year end in abortion.

Critics say that the availability of abortions have encouraged more teenagers to have sex without contraceptives, and prevented progress in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies. The British rate is among the highest in Europe.

Last year the authorities changed their code of practice to allow condoms to be advertised on television to reduce teenage and unwanted pregnancies. However, they postponed a decision on whether to allow abortion, or “post-conception”, services to advertise because the issue was too controversial.

Marie Stopes, which has sought to advertise on television for many years, took legal advice on whether it could go ahead under the existing code and was given permission. The code allowed “non-commercial organizations” such as the government to advertise pregnancy advisory services.

The new advertisement shows images of various women who are late on their period and stumped about what to do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 20th, 2010 at 5:15 am and is filed under England, Social Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.