(SPUC and SPUC Scotland are separate organisations.)

Now, back in the day, the branch of SPUC I joined did two things I particularly remember. We shoogled collecting tins, mostly outside football grounds, and one quiet lady prepared letter-writing materials on matters of the day. She investigated the question, identified and described the players, mustered and summarised facts and arguments, and sent all this out to a list of people who used this to write letters to the relevant MPs and the like. Funds went mostly to SPUC Scotland in Glasgow. They produced useful leaflets which we stuck through doors before elections or important votes. They also trained people to give one-off presentations in schools, and provided them with materials for the presentations. None of this was earthshaking, but it was all concrete, and worked on an “enabling” model that assumed there were other people who wanted to do something about promoting a culture of life even if most of their time was taken up with family and work.

I always assumed this was rather the point of SPUC. A few people given over to doing the legwork that most people don’t have the time, or perhaps the facilities or ability, to do. The charities index and the handy voting records index produced by London SPUC seemed to be along exactly the same lines, and there was the great and hugely useful 2002 book A Way of Life (a revised edition of a book produced when there was a particularly concerted effort to get more abortion into Northern Ireland).   Stuff people could actually use.   The  Love your unborn neighbour book produced by SPUC Evangelicals was something I was happy to pass on to a girl from my college CU.

Now I get news digests in which the first item advertises a talk by a Catholic apologist, and most of the rest are about sex education and assorted legislation to do with men who like to engage in sexual activity with other men.  And the “SPUC Director” blog varies this with insider comment on Catholic affairs.

The many bizarre ways in which the place of sexual activity in human life is conceived (sorry) are in large part the cause of the acceptance of abortion. And ultimately without the Gospel no moral discourse can understand human reality. But while most people who work for or support SPUC will hold these positions, is attempting to promote them the work for which SPUC was founded?