JOHN SMEATON, SPUC DIRECTOR Saturday, 12 November 2011 SPUC's staff have informed me that this weekend's edition of The Catholic Herald - sold in just about every Catholic church in the United Kingdom - contains an advertising insert, addressed to "Dear Catholic Herald readers", from the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT). Terrence Higgins was a homosexual who was one of the first people in the UK to die from AIDS. Among other things, THT:
- says about abortion: "The important thing to remember is that it is your body and your choice to continue with a pregnancy or not." The status of the unborn child isn't mentioned, nor are moral objections to abortion explained
- links to the abortion providers BPAS and Marie Stopes and the pro-abortion group Education for Choice, on its pages on abortion
- described "abortion and contraception services" as "an area of considerable unmet need"
- says: "Some people worry that emergency contraception [the morning-after pill] is a form of abortion, but it is not, as an abortion involves removing a foetus from the womb. Emergency contraception works by preventing a foetus from being able to develop."
- welcomed a finding that stem cells from mouse embryos could potentially lead to an embryonic stem cell cure for AIDS (The Times, 22 March 2004)
- provides "living wills" (advance directives), now part of the pro-euthanasia Mental Capacity Act
- attacked the Catholic Church's opposition to the promotion of condoms
- made false claims about the benefits of sex education
- says: "Some people think that being straight is ‘normal’ and that being gay or bisexual is ‘abnormal’. This is not true; no sexuality is better or more normal than another."
- says: "Being gay is completely normal."
- says: "Masturbation is completely natural, normal, and a good way of getting to know your body."
- provides a explicitly-detailed guide to various - and some totally disgusting - sexual acts.
The inclusion of the THT advertisement in latest Catholic Herald comes only one month after the newspaper's inclusion of advertisements for Médecins Sans Frontières and the Alzheimer's Society, which also support anti-life practices. Following my blogpost a month ago about those inclusions, concerned readers wrote directly to The Catholic Herald's editor to complain. There is therefore no credible excuse for its latest failure to ensure that advertisements for anti-life or anti-family organisations are not inserted in its editions. |
