A charity that has been given £250,000 from the government’s so-called tampon tax fund has scrubbed language describing abortion after rape as a “death penalty” from its website after being challenged on it.
The Life charity has now said it will do a full review of its website to remove offensive language, after the Guardian pointed out that the same article referred to abortion in cases of disability as a “death sentence”.
Life, which campaigns against abortion, was among 70 organisations working with women and girls to receive funding from the £12m tampon tax fund set up by George Osborne.
The £250,000 funding will go into housing and counselling services run by Life for homeless pregnant women in west London, the government announced. But the decision to award Life funding provoked concern among some women’s groups.
On Monday, Life’s education director Anne Scanlan was challenged on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about a piece on the charity’s website in which abortion after rape was described as a “death penalty”.
Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, brought up the phrasing and said: “You cannot be saying on one hand that you provide an unbiased, non-judgemental approach to dealing with women when this is the ideological motivation of your organisation.”
Scanlan responded: “I cannot believe we use that terminology at all, we would absolutely never use that kind of language face to face when dealing with women.”
The article was swiftly edited on Monday morning to remove the description. However, the same article still referred to abortion in cases of disability as a “death sentence”.
When the Guardian pointed this out, Scanlan said the language was inappropriate and offensive, and pledged to review all content on the website. “Where inappropriate language was used, we will amend it or remove it,” she said.
“We offer help and support to women. We certainly don’t want anything on the website that’s offensive,” Scanlan said. “We are not going to shy away from it: we are an anti-abortion organisation. But I was genuinely surprised to find out that language was being used on our website.”
Scanlan said she did not know how long the article had been online but believed it was written before she arrived at Life six years ago and had slipped through the net when the website was revamped last year. “Unfortunately a whole swathe of briefing papers have been moved from the old website without being adequately checked,” she said.
She denied that the group’s opposition to abortion made it unsuitable to receive the tampon tax funding. “We never, ever try to push our views onto anybody else,” she said, adding Life provides “non-directive counselling” that avoids recommending any particular course of action. “When it comes to providing support for women, we’re not debating the issue: we are just providing support,” she added.
Furedi told the Guardian she did not believe it was possible to separate Life’s opposition to abortion from the advice it provides to women. “Organisations are led by their values, and that runs through advocacy and campaigning, but it also runs through the way services are delivered,” she said, adding: “What they are saying is abortion has, as far as they are concerned, no place in the management of problem pregnancy.”
The government’s decision to provide funding to an anti-abortion organisation was a “slap in the face” to public opinion, which is increasingly supportive of choice, Furedi said, pointing out that the £250,000 was among the largest grants handed out: “Every woman who’s buying sanitary protection is being caused to effectively make a donation [to Life]”. The charity has a turnover of £3.6m a year.
A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which determines how the tampon tax fund is distributed, said the money is being spent to “help improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls, including those who have been affected by violence,” adding: “Life has been awarded £250,000 to fund a specific project in west London that will help homeless and other at risk women who are pregnant by providing housing, counselling and life skills training.”
The government declined to comment on whether it had any concerns about providing significant funding to an avowedly pro-life organisation.
Anti-abortion group in tampon tax row removes death penalty comparison
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