Happy birthday to us!

Dust off the party poppers, EFC is 20 years old this year!

We were founded back in 1992 as a result of a lack of good quality educational resources on pregnancy and abortion. Teachers were finding that despite the topic of abortion being on many syllabi, there was very little support in terms of teaching it in a sensible and balanced way. Sure, the old anti-choice stalwarts SPUC and Life had been around for a good 20 years, but their offerings tended to be (and still are) partially inaccurate, biased and often insensitive to young people's experiences of pregnancy. A group of sexual health professionals therefore got together to form 'Education For Choice' and ensure that young people could learn the facts about abortion.

Over the past 20 years we're stayed true to our mission - to provide young people with reliable information about pregnancy options. We've done this directly, by providing workshops in schools, colleges and youth centres, but also by producing resources and training up professionals who work with young people. We reckon we’ve reached around 1.8 million young people through this work. Not bad for a tiny project with limited resources eh?

Our 20 years of experience means that we are experts on young people and abortion and are often contacted by the press to provide information and comment. Recent years have seen us work to expose rogue crisis pregnancy centres offering inaccurate information, and highlight the problem of anti-choice speakers giving misinformation to young people in schools. No one else in the UK is doing this vital and unique work.

We’re proud of what we’ve achieved, but while sex education remains a patchy subject and anti-abortion groups continue to mislead young people about their health and wellbeing we think it’s important that EFC continues to shout loud for young people’s right to good education.

We’re asking you to support our work by giving us £20 for our 20 years. Or a monthly donation – even a small amount will make a real difference. To spice things up we’ll be posting some classic tunes from 1992 to now, culminating in our birthday extravaganza in London on 22nd November. We’d love to see you there.

If you believe young people deserve to be give the facts about pregnancy and abortion, then please give what you can to support EFC’s work.

The cost of balance

After 20 years of advocating for evidence-based abortion education EFC was pleased to see the front page of this weekend’s Guardian exposing a SPUC school presentation which delivered many of the false claims about abortion we take to task on this very blog. The talk at Comberton Village College in Cambridge contained misinformation about abortion, including claims that it can increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer, infertility and so called ‘post-abortion trauma’.

The public were rightfully outraged but unfortunately this isn’t a one-off. It’s not just SPUC giving misinformation and it’s not just at this school. We know, from contact with teachers across the country, that anti-abortion groups are speaking to young people regularly in a range of schools. Whether it’s Lovewise presenting at an Academy in Northumberland, or Life talking to Sixth Formers about sexual health at a Catholic school in Solihull we have a real concern that not all the information will be based on evidence. SPUC, Life and Lovewise all put out literature which gives misinformation about pregnancy, contraception and abortion.

We’ve written before about the problem of schools inviting in groups like this. But we’re still surprised when educators like the Principal at Comberton defend their decision to allow a group to mislead young people about their reproductive health in the interests of ensuring ‘proper balance’. Our criticism remains the same; these groups are entitled to hold a particular viewpoint, but not to use misinformation about a medical procedure to promote this viewpoint to children. ‘Abortion is morally wrong’ is a viewpoint, ‘Abortion causes breast cancer’ is simply unscientific misinformation.

The photo below is an example of a pamphlet provided by Life to a comprehensive school in Wiltshire.

It’s only words

Today’s blog was inspired by an accusation levelled at EFC claiming that although we present ourselves as being a ‘pro-choice’ organisation we are in fact ‘pro-abortion’. I wanted to unpick this claim and look at the language that we, and others use to frame our position on sexual and reproductive health.

Abortion is an emotive subject. The strong feelings people have about it are often reflected in the language they use. Recent debate in the U.S has seen ambiguous terms like ‘pro-family’ or ‘pro-life’ being used to describe those presidential candidates who are opposed to unrestricted access to abortion. ‘The other side’, that is to say, those who support abortion rights, are labelled ‘pro-choice’, ‘pro-abortion’ and when the heat’s really on, ‘pro-death’ and ‘baby-killers’. (Actually, those last two are from recent UK blogs describing EFC). The complexities of getting this language right are evidenced in this long-winded blog by U.S National Public Radio.

Most abortion rights supporters choose not to use the term ‘pro-life’ to describe those who oppose abortion, largely because they resent being positioned as the ‘opposite’ to this, as being somehow ‘anti-life’. In fact, many of those who support a woman’s right to choose would consider themselves to be ‘pro-life’ and even ‘pro-family’ in terms of respecting people’s right to make decisions about their own family, having children when they are in a position to care for them and so on. Some make the point that in fact those declaring themselves to be ‘pro-life’ with respect to the abortion debate do not always adhere to the label when it comes to discussing the death penalty.

One commonly used alternative to ‘pro-life’ is ‘anti-choice’. It acknowledges that what is generally proposed by an individual who is ‘against abortion’ is a desire to restrict legal or practical access to abortion. Therefore somebody who wouldn’t choose to end a pregnancy themselves, or who has religious or moral objections to the procedure but would nevertheless support another’s right to choose would not be contained within this category. One sexual health professional suggested to me recently that he feels the term ‘anti-choice’ is too vague. That when describing groups such as SPUC or Life we should make clear that they are ‘organisations opposed to abortion in every situation’. To make evident the extreme position this entails – that whether a woman becomes pregnant through incest or rape, whether the pregnancy endangers her health, these organisations would not support her legal right to choose abortion in any circumstance.

Coming back to EFC and our self-positioning as ‘pro-choice’, we stand by this. By ‘pro-choice’ we mean simply that we support a woman’s right to choose whichever pregnancy option she feels is best for her. Our work focuses on abortion as this is the option many people have the least information about, or where political agendas can cloud real life issues. Approximately half of young women who become pregnant will make this choice and we believe that they are entitled to factual information about their health and wellbeing should they do so. Yes we believe abortion is a valid option for someone facing a pregnancy they can’t or don’t want to continue. But this is not the same as being ‘pro-abortion’. You would be very hard pushed to find an organisation which believes abortion is always the right option for everyone who becomes pregnant!  A great portion of our work is about motivating young people to use contraception consistently or delay sex in order to avoid unwanted pregnancy in the first place. But we acknowledge the reality that abortion does happen and that young people need the facts so that they can make their own informed decisions about it.