A leading UK anti-abortion charity, with links to MPs and peers, has increased its ad spend on Facebook more than tenfold in three years, spending almost £190,000 on advertising campaigns.
In a joint study, the Observer and the Citizens analyzed the spend and content of hundreds of Facebook ads paid for by Right to Life UK between June 2020 and November 2023. The findings show that the charity – which provides secretariat for the Pro-Life All Party Parliamentary Group – spent an average of £117,000 in 2023, up from an average of £11,400 in 2020, £16,900 in 2021 and £43,600 in 2022.
This year, the charity's adverts – often featuring sensitive images of fetuses and premature babies – were viewed 13.5 million times, up from less than 1 million times in 2020. Over the same period, the number increased income by 60%.
Facebook let us know Observer that it marks posts with images of fetuses as “sensitive” for content related to abortion. However, the policy does not appear to stop advertisers from using fetal images, as Right to Life UK regularly does.
Several ads contain misleading content, including claims that telemedicine – a policy change introduced during the pandemic to allow women to take abortion pills at home – is 'dangerous' and calling on supporters to write to MPs to denounce its 'atrocities' fuses.
The NHS has confirmed that abortion is a safe method. a study Research into 50,000 early medical abortions in Britain in 2020 found that outcomes for the traditional model – which involved a clinic visit – were the same as for telemedicine, with no serious side effects in 99.95% of cases.
“Telemedicine has given women access to abortion during some of the earliest pregnancies and allowed us to provide more effective, patient-centred support to women in some of the most challenging circumstances,” said Clare Murphy, CEO of the UK Pregnancy Advisory Service. the Observer.
Right to life UK confirmed that it ran ads claiming two women died after receiving telemedicine, making it “dangerous.” It confirmed that the content was based on a Sun report dated July 30, 2020. This report was corrected by the newspaper the next day to confirm that the deaths were not in fact related to telemedicine. The charity said it withdrew the ads as soon as it became aware the claims were false.
More recent advertisements from Right to Life UK urge a petition to make sex-selective abortion a specific criminal offence.
Reproductive rights experts agree that banning sex-selective abortions is ineffective.
The Center for Reproductive Rights claims that “bans on sex selection do not prevent sex-selective abortions” and may lead women to “seek unsafe, illegal abortions.” Such bans, the report adds, “are part of the anti-choice movement's long-term strategy to undermine women's ability to decide whether and when to have children.”
Other Right to Life UK ads on Facebook have focused on proposals to change the law on abortion.
In 2020 and 2021, as efforts were made to fully decriminalize abortion, Right to Life UK ran paid advertisements calling on supporters to prevent parliament from introducing “extreme” abortion laws, which would mean MPs would vote to “ban abortion feeding, for any reason, until birth.” This is what the charity said Observer that since the amendment in question would have removed the legal restrictions of the Abortion Act 1967, it would have introduced abortion on demand up to birth.
Abortion is legal in Britain within the exceptions set out in the Abortion Act 1967. However, it remains a criminal offense under the Offenses Act. In June 2023, a woman was sentenced to 28 months in prison for having an abortion after the maximum term of 24 weeks.
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Labor MP Stella Creasy has tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to decriminalize abortion in England and Wales, bringing it in line with Northern Ireland.
Her colleague Diana Johnson, MP, has also tabled an amendment to remove women from the criminal justice system in relation to abortion.
“A vote for decriminalization is explicitly not a vote for abortion up to birth, as some have tried to scare,” Creasy said. “That is not the case in Northern Ireland and it will not be the case here.”
Abortion was decriminalized in 2011 Northern Ireland in March 2020, where terminations are possible on request up to 12 weeks' gestation, and in limited circumstances after 12 weeks.
Creasy added: “It is critical that Facebook intervenes to prevent such claims from being spread without challenge by these well-funded anti-abortion organizations.”
Facebook has allowed disinformation and misleading posts from the charity to be published without intervention. There have been cases of Facebook removing posts for “violating advertising standards.” However, the social media company's policies appear to have been inconsistently applied, with other versions of the ads, which used the same text and images, being allowed to appear on the platform.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment, but shared information about its review process for abortion-related ads, noting that they may only target people over 18.