Anti-abortion group attacks plan to allow pregnancy advice ads

Anti-abortion groups today attacked a proposal to allow TV ads giving pregnancy advice, arguing that the relaxation will lead to abortion clinics running commercials.

The proposal features in wide-ranging plans to shake up broadcast advertising, including the option of allowing condom commercials before the 9pm TV watershed, which were put out to public consultation today by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice.

A spokesman for Bcap said that due to the referral process in the UK, under which women are usually referred by their GP or a hospital doctor, it was "unlikely" that abortion clinics would be advertising directly to consumers and flooding TV screens with commercials.

However, pregnancy advice service Marie Stopes International, which also performs abortions, said today that it would consider running TV ads, although it was unlikely to have the budget to buy airtime around peak time evening shows.

The Bcap proposes that pregnancy advice services should be allowed to begin advertising on TV and radio. Services that do advertise will be required to make clear if they do not offer a referral service for abortions.

"Bcap's proposed rule on pregnancy advisory services would, in theory, allow abortion clinics to advertise," said a Bcap spokesman. "However, as this service is normally accessed via a referral from a GP or hospital it is unlikely that we are going to start seeing ads for them."

John Smeaton, the national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said that the proposal "threatens to further commercialise the killing of unborn children".

"It would completely disregard the adverse effect of abortion on women's health. Agencies with a financial interest in abortion will be in a position to buy expensive broadcast advertising, whereas groups which provide objective information about abortion and its impact on women's health will be unlikely to afford to advertise," Smeaton added.

"We note the proposed requirement that any group advertising counselling services for pregnant women must make clear if the group does not refer women for abortion. We will be scrutinising the Advertising Standards Authority's proposals [the watchdog responsible for enforcing the rules] closely for any similar signs of potential discrimination against pro-life groups. The ASA already demonstrated a bias against pro-life groups when it attempted to ban advertisements which stated correctly that morning-after pills may cause early abortions."

The Bcap proposals also include a plan to allow condoms to be advertised before the 9pm watershed, in a move designed to help tackle the UK's teen pregnancy rate, which is the highest in Europe. This proposal comes with the caveat that "ads will be kept away from the youngest viewers".

Smeaton said that the relaxation of the pre-watershed ban on condom TV ads would "only serve to sexualise young people, and the resulting promiscuity would lead to more abortions, more teenage pregnancies and more sexually transmitted infections".

Bcap's consultation, which comes after 18 months' work reviewing the existing advertising codes, also aims to crack down on advertising in some sectors and introduce an overarching "social responsibility rule" for all TV advertisers to adhere to.

There will be new, tighter rules aimed at preventing the exaggeration of environmental claims made in TV ads. Bcap is also proposing that ads for age-restricted video games – such as those with high levels of violence and graphic imagery – be banned from appearing around children's programmes or be designed to specifically target kids.

Another Bcap proposal is for a new rule preventing marketers from collecting data from under-12s without obtaining parental consent.

The new code would also crack down on exaggerated claims about products in TV advertising, an issue the sector's regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority, has taken the beauty industry to task over. The draft code includes a rule that any claims in commercials must only be based on "normal use" of a product.

Bcap's review of the advertising code, the first time in 50 years that both the broadcast and non-broadcast ad rules have been revised at the same time, will now be open to public consultation until 19 June. Bcap will publish the new code in the autumn, with the revised rules to come into force in 2010.

"Our priority is to ensure that the rules remain relevant for the future so that consumers can continue to enjoy and trust the ads they see," said Andrew Brown, chairman of Bcap. "Throughout this process we sought the views of industry and policymakers and now we want to hear from all other interested parties, including the people that matter the most in advertising, the general public."

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