Stopping abortion in schools by teaching children the truth at home
By John Smeaton | 21 June 2023
Parents around the world will be understandably wondering what on earth they can do about the abortion juggernaut targeting their children. To help them, Voice of the Family is making the Family and Life Academy course on abortion available for free.
In recent weeks, US President Joe Biden has launched a huge drive across the United States to increase the number of abortions amongst young people. Through the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the Biden Administration has launched a nationwide social media campaign urging school-age children to contact one of over 3,200 “Title X” family planning clinics across the United States. The Administration’s social media campaigns use powerful visual propaganda featuring smiling young people proclaiming the President’s message, “Expand sexual and reproductive health information and services”.
At the same time, the United Nations, alongside the European Union, Australia, Canada and other powerful nations, have been stepping up their efforts to force international agreements in favour of abortion-promoting “comprehensive sex education” for every country in the world. And earlier this month, the British Parliament introduced new regulations making it compulsory to teach pupils in secondary schools how to access abortion. Chris Heaton-Harris, the British minister for Northern Ireland, said:
“The regulations [for Northern Ireland] will mirror the approach taken in England with regard to … access to abortion”.
The legal position in English schools is that secondary school children should be provided with “the facts about the full range of contraceptive choices and options”, and signposted as to abortion and contraception services without parental knowledge or consent. This position was welcomed by the Catholic Education Service, on behalf of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, on the same day as the Government’s much-heralded legislative proposals were debated in Parliament. The CES said that the government’s Relationships and Sex Education proposals were “compatible with the model Catholic curriculum”.
What can parents do to fight back against the powers that be when we read, this past week, that a teacher in England may have “to remortgage her house” to pay £14,000 in legal costs, after she challenged the ideological norms and went on to lose a legal dispute over using a pupil’s preferred pronouns?
Where the innocence of children and their eternal salvation are concerned, it is clear that parents “ought to obey God, rather than men” (Acts 5:29), following the firm injunction of Pope Leo XIII, confirmed by Pius XI in Divini illius magristri (1929):
“By nature, parents have a right to the training of their children, but with this added duty that the education and instruction of the child be in accord with the end for which, by God’s blessing, it was begotten. Therefore it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, and to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty, and above all to refuse to send them to those schools in which there is danger of imbibing the deadly poison of impiety.”
Leo XIII, Sapientiae christianae (1890).
Moreover, when Catholic bishops are welcoming “the deadly poison” of contraception and abortion access in their dioceses, and so many priests are consequently reluctant to face the truth and to speak out, it’s clear that mothers and fathers must stand united in the breach and defend their children.
Tragically, today, the abortion culture is in the air we breathe, so parents must begin at home by teaching their children the truth about the dignity of human life and the evil of abortion — a task in which the Family and Life Academy can help enormously through its course on abortion. The course is made up of six lessons:
- Lesson 1: Humanity from conception, abortion techniques and other attacks on the unborn
- Lesson 2: The evil of abortion and how to defeat it
- Lesson 3: Eugenics in the history of legalised abortion
- Lesson 4: Tactics used in the worldwide abortion revolution
- Lesson 5: Abortion and women’s health
- Lesson 6: Historic events and key figures in the history of legalised abortion
The Family and Life Academy course is presented by three teachers: Dr Greg Pike, a research scientist; Ann Farmer, an international authority on eugenics; and myself, the former chief executive officer of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (1996–2021).
In lesson 1, Dr Pike explores the reality of human development before birth, so richly explored by scientific researchers in recent decades, and the brutal facts of abortion. Dr Pike also explains the abortifacient nature of various contraceptive drugs and devices, and the enormous destruction of human embryos in IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) procedures.
In lesson 2, “The evil of abortion and how to defeat it”, begins with six reasons why abortion is one of the worst atrocities in the whole of human history, and why Catholics are especially called upon to bring it to an end. These reasons are then expounded in light of authentic Catholic teaching from the time of the apostles to the twenty-first century:
- Firstly and fundamentally, every human life is sacred because human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and therefore have what’s called “inviolable dignity”. Even the smallest of children, at their tender age, can learn from the story of Creation, without any reference to abortion, how unique and special they are to Almighty God.
- Secondly, non-Catholics, people of all faiths and none, are able to recognise the dignity of every human being through what’s called the natural law, which, according to St Paul, is written on men’s hearts by God.
- Thirdly, abortion involves the killing of the smallest, most vulnerable persons on earth, unique, innocent human beings in their mothers’ womb.
- Fourthly, the number of killings from abortion in the past century, is greater than all the people killed in all of the wars in recorded history.
- Fifthly, making the killing of unborn children legally available seems to cause most people, including Catholics, to think that abortion is acceptable in certain circumstances.
- Sixthly, when people, including Catholics, accept abortion, they begin to accept the killing of other innocent human lives — by such means as euthanasia, or the killing of human embryos produced by in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
Ann Farmer, in her lesson on eugenics, discusses the central role that the eugenics movement played in the legalisation of abortion and shows that the same agenda is pursued in the policies of many countries today.
In the fourth lesson, I explore the tactics and arguments used to bring about a worldwide abortion revolution.
Then Dr Pike returns in the penultimate lesson to expose the truth behind the medical establishment’s narrative that abortion is a relatively safe procedure.
In the final lesson, I review some of the leading figures, key events and cultural forces which have shaped, and continue to shape the battle against abortion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These include American abortion lobbyist turned pro-life advocate, Bernard Nathanson, the British parliament and the US Supreme Court, the historic impact of the Frankfurt School, along with the role of the United Nations, the Irish Abortion Referenda of 1983 and 2018, and the growing movement in the US to protect unborn children conceived in rape.
Study notes and recommendations for further reading are also included with each lesson. Though these resources will undoubtedly assist families, it is parents who will know best how to present the truths explored in the course to their children, selecting materials appropriate for every age and ability, from infancy to young adulthood.
It was as an infant that the author of this article received the Catholic teaching that we are made in the image and likeness of God. This formed the basis of my opposition to abortion when the Abortion Act 1967 was going through Parliament in my teenage years.
We at Voice of the Family pray that many families and children around the world will benefit from the Family and Life Academy course on abortion, now freely available to all Academy users.
To access the course, just create an account at the Family and Life Academy. Or simply log in if you are already signed up.