Pro-life Northern Ireland billboard campaign cleared by the ASA
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has cleared a contentious billboard campaign in Northern Ireland supporting the province’s tough stance on abortion despite drawing 14 complaints that its message was misleading.
Anti-abortion advertising billboard cleared by the ASA
Pro-life lobbyists Both Lives Matter produced the campaign to mark 50 years since implementation of the UK Abortion Act, claiming that: ‘100,000 people are alive today because of our laws on abortion’, a figure which was disputed by 14 complainants.
Both Lives Matter said it had arrived at the six figure number by extrapolating abortion rates in Scotland since the relaxation of laws on terminating pregnancies in 1967, inferring what the comparable rate would have been in Northern Ireland itself had it also implemented the Abortion Act.
Explaining its decision to side with Both Lives Matter the ASA said: “On balance, we concluded that the evidence indicated that there was a reasonable probability that around 100,000 people were alive in Northern Ireland today who would have otherwise been aborted had it been legal to do so.
"Because we considered that readers would understand the figure to represent an estimate, we concluded that the claim was unlikely to materially mislead readers."
Dawn McAvoy, spokeswoman for Both Lives Matter welcomed the ‘endorsement’ of their campaign, adding that their calculations were backed up by a ‘robust’ report.
Anti-abortion campaigns have long been a source of division with residents of Chicago outraged by an Obama poster targeting black people with the claim that 'Every 21 minutes, our next possible leader is aborted'.