by Billy Atwell
Britain’s version of Planned Parenthood is Marie Stopes International. They are abortion advocates and providers who are well-known for their insensitive and unsettling approach to marketing their services as abortion suppliers. MSI has come under fire in recent weeks and months for a television ad that offered help to women who think they might be pregnant but did not know what to do. Without knowing that MSI was the largest abortion provider in Britain, they might seem compassionate and service-oriented. The reality of what they do is egregious and depressing, which is why Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority received thousands of complaints as a result of the TV ad.
They’re at it again. Moving from television ads to company policies, MSI now offers free abortions to staff members with benefits packages through the company, and extends this “service” to their children as well. Other inclusions in the MSI benefit package are discounts for gym memberships, male/female sterilizations, and other medical “services.”
MSI admits to having offered free abortions to company employees for decades, but only recently made this practice officially covered under their policies. The most significant outrage expressed because of this policy is that MSI is heavily funded by the British government. Under the Hyde Amendment, Americans are protected from funding abortion programs with federal dollars, but the recently passed healthcare legislation brings this policy into question.
The problems with advertising abortions and offering them as free procedures are obvious on its face. Removing the barriers to abortion is not done to give women a free choice; rather it’s done to give desperate women less choice. After all, if it’s free…then why not?
Reducing the barrier of an abortion’s cost signifies not only a way to trap women who already feel vulnerable and without choice, but demonstrate another instance of placing a dollar value on the heads of people. Babies in America are aborted at a cost ranging anywhere from $500 to thousands of dollars, while it appears that some babies in Britain can be aborted at no cost at all. What this does is create a situation where babies are only saved if the financial burden is too high. So babies that can be aborted for free—or charged to the taxpayer—have a seemingly lower value to the culture in which they were killed. See the problem here?
When babies are allowed to be aborted as a means of birth-control and without some case of extreme medical exception, then babies are valued according to how much it costs to abort them. If for no other reason than this—and the fact that babies have intrinsic value—the utilitarian concept of “greatest good” means money can supplement the hand of God.
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Billy Atwell contributes to Catholic Online, and blogs for The Point and the Manhattan Declaration.
From the perspective of a two-time cancer survivor he encourages those
afflicted with pain and struggling with faith. You can find all of his
writings at For the Greater Glory.