A BBC website lesson promoting the views of an anti-abortion group was removed by the broadcaster this weekend after a backlash from health experts.
The Religious Studies Review Guide, on BBC Bitesize, the broadcaster’s educational resource, lists “powerful arguments” against abortion, uses the term “pro-life” rather than “anti-abortion” and includes a page dedicated to a vocal campaigner calling for abortion in Great Britain to be banned.
The Society for the Protection of the Unborn (SPUC) has a history of promoting misinformation in schools and was exposed in 2019 for launching a Toy Game-themed campaign targeting children that falsely claimed fetuses could feel pain 10 weeks after conception.
The broadcaster said it was now reviewing the material in its religious studies guide, which covers Catholic views on life and death and is aimed at 15- and 16-year-old GCSE students.
The SPUC has a track record of promoting extreme views on abortion among children in ways that are simply factually wrong. Robert Kahn, Humanists UK
The SPUC has also repeatedly promoted on its website a procedure known as “abortion reversal,” which medical organizations have condemned as unproven and potentially dangerous. And last week he celebrated the decision in the US to overturn Roe v Wade – the Supreme Court ruling that protected women’s right to abortion across the country – as a “monumental day for justice [and the] unborn’.
Despite its achievements, the group was described uncritically in BBC Bitesize as a “pro-life” charity that “advocates for the rights of the unborn”, promotes the “sanctity of human life” and “supports individuals and families during pregnancy”. No pro-choice organizations were mentioned.
Critics said the material, part of a BBC Bitesize resource based on the WJEC exam board syllabus, failed to make a clear distinction between fact and opinion and risked exposing children to “harmful” misinformation.
Lisa Holgarten, head of policy at Brook, the national sexual health charity, described the teaching material as “shocking” and “problematic in many ways”. . “Pointing to an organization that is very unreliable when it comes to factual information is problematic because you’re giving them credibility,” she said. “It’s not abstract to young people; this is real life. We should really avoid sending people to organizations that will not benefit them.
As well as SPUC’s presentation, BBC resource Bitesize lists “powerful arguments” against abortion, including that it “denies choice to the unborn child” and makes human life seem “cheap and disposable”.
In another section, a chart titled “Alternatives to Abortion” suggests sexual abstinence and natural family planning as solutions to avoid unwanted pregnancy and “financial support” as an alternative to termination, but makes no mention of contraception.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, an abortion provider, expressed concern about information given to teenagers about alternatives to abortion and said it was “absurd” that the chart offered abstinence and natural family planning but made no mention of contraception.
The BBC Bitesize chart entitled ‘Alternatives to Abortion’. Photo: BBC Bitesize
Humanists UK, a charity promoting secularism, said it was vital that religious studies teaching emphasized different points of view and encouraged structured debate. But Robert Kahn, his education campaign manager, said SPUC’s involvement was inappropriate given its “record of promoting extreme views on abortion among children in ways that are simply factually wrong.”
“We need to be very cautious when his name and resources are hosted uncritically in a GCSE RE revision course for children,” he said.
He also criticized the resource for not reflecting the views of most Catholics. Polls show that most support abortion and the use of contraception. “This resource assumes that Christians, and Catholics in particular, will invariably oppose abortion. But this is the opposite of the truth – we know that as recently as 2013 less than 7% of the general population said they were against abortion, including just 14% of Catholics – numbers that have only gone down since then,” he said . “The whole thing needs an overhaul to be presented in a more critical, objective and pluralistic way.”
On Friday, the BBC said it was reviewing the resource and that it had been “temporarily removed” in the meantime. A spokeswoman added that the resource is based on the WJEC exam board syllabus, which is why it includes a reference to SPUC.
But despite targeting a specific group, the resource is publicly available on the broadcaster’s website and links to it appear high in Google results for searches relating to SPUC, abortion and the BBC.
The BBC website says the Bitesize guides are “written by teachers and subject experts and mapped to follow UK curricula”.
WJEC, the exam board whose material is intended to accompany the BBC’s guide, has distanced itself from the teaching material. “The resources developed by BBC Bitesize have been created without the involvement of our Religious Studies team and are therefore not endorsed by WJEC,” a spokesperson said. Although WJEC’s curriculum addresses opposing views on abortion, he said he does not advocate a specific one.
The Society for the Protection of the Unborn said it could not comment on the BBC’s resource, but that its own content was based on “scientific facts surrounding life before birth”. A spokesman accused pro-choice groups of “sanitizing abortion.”
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