NEW The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child was founded in 1967 as a direct reaction against the 1967 Abortion Act. It is bitterly opposed to the right of women to control their own bodies, advocating the sanctity of family life' - a euphemism for chaining women anent inferiority.
elor Viscount Barrington, an Old Wing class women.
to domestic drudgery and permThe chairman of SPUC is a bachEtonian who has served in the Royal its defence. Artillery and the Diplomatic Service • which undoubtedly provides him with impeccable qualifications for appreciating the problems of workDeputy chairman is Professor of Gynaecology J.S. Scott, who is not averse to throwing around the most unscientific arguments. He once claimed: "Foetuses feel pain just as a baby in the cot would... the only difference being that any attempts to cry are stifled by the water in which the baby floats.' An outcry from other doctors against such unprovable assertions has since forced him to lie doggo on that one.
SPUC is not short of support. Jill Knight, Tory MP for Edgbaston; has used the most dubious stories in 'BURNED ALIVE' In 1966 she was writing: "Aborted babies are being burned alive. This Tory hack also claimed - without a shred of evidence - that: "In Sweden if a child has not been killed in the operation, they drown it in a bucket like a kitten.... Naturally Mr& Knight has never produced one single shred of evidence to back up Another who is jumping on the SPUC bandwagon is Labour MP Leo Abse. His taste in exotic clothes is only matched by his taste in exotic and bizarre ideas. A rabid supporter of the horror comic Babies for Burn ing, he reviewed this book under the heading, 'The Murder Trade of the London Abortion Clinics.
Describing the two charlatans who concocted this tissue of lies as 'virginal and pristine', he has remained 'strangely quiet about the Sun- J. King day Times's debunking of its assertions. After all, what are a few lies when you are in the front trenches defending the new moral order?
NO BRUNETTES!
Another rabid SPUC supporter is Professor Hugh McLaren, a Presbyterian father of seven children who has the nerve to assert publicly that most women seeking abortions are blondes, quite healthy, with cars.
Also on the SPUC executive is Myra Sim, whose sympathetic and kindly nature comes out in her statement that there are never any psychiatric grounds for abortion...."
Press Secretary to SPUC is Phyllis Bowman, who is fond of 'convincing arguments such as that the majority of girls who have abortions are panicked. It never enters her head that for many working class women more children mean misery, poverty and deprivation.
LABOUR HELP Just to make sure that these rightwingers don't feel isolated, the social democrats help out. Apart from Leo Abse's support, the SPUC executive is adorned by two Labour MPs, Gordon Oakes and James Dunn.
As the crisis of British capitalism deepens, the Labour Government is making savage cuts in public expenditure. The social services and the National Health Service are high on its list for sacrifices. The idea that the family should take on even more of the burden of social and