Carmen Duenas, a spokeswoman for the leading conservative opposition Popular Party in the Senate, accused the government of trying ‘to bring in unrestricted abortion’. ‘The government wants to do away with one of the pillars of Spanish society, which is the family,’ she said. But Senator Leire Pajin, the ruling Socialist party’s No. 3, said the new law ‘paid off an outstanding debt’ to women, offering them a choice and bringing an end to illegal abortions.

Under the previous law, which dates back to 1985, Spanish women could in theory go to jail for getting an abortion outside certain strict limits — up to week 12 in case of rape and week 22 in the case of fetal abnormality. But abortion has been in effect widely available because women can assert mental distress as sole grounds for having an abortion, regardless of how late the pregnancy is. Most of the more than 100,000 abortions carried out each year in Spain were early-term ones that fell under this category, AP reports.

While the new law has been widely reported as a liberalisation of the law, some reproductive choice advocates have cautioned that, in practice, it may restrict women’s access to abortion in later gestations. Before the reforms, although there was no ‘right’ to abortion, the law allowed abortion without time limit in broadly the same circumstances as the British law up to 24 weeks. This meant that doctors prepared to interpret it liberally could, and did, offer access way beyond the 14 weeks that the new law permits. Women from throughout Europe have been known to travel to Spain to have an abortion that would be denied in their home country.

The new bill provides for greater regulation. It permits abortion up to 22 weeks if two doctors certify there is a serious threat to the health of the mother, or fetal malformation. Beyond 22 weeks, it would be allowed only doctors certify fetal malformation deemed incompatible with life or the fetus were diagnosed with an extremely serious or incurable disease.

The new bill was automatically approved when a majority of senators rejected three proposals by conservative parties to have it vetoed, and then rejected a total of 88 amendments, AP reports. It will be published in the state bulletin next month and will take effect four months later.

The part of the new law allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to have abortions without parental consent puts Spain in line with other European countries such as Germany, Britain and France. It was among the bill’s most controversial elements. In the end, the government amended it so that minors must inform their parents or legal guardian if they plan to undergo an abortion, but do not need their permission. They are, however, exempt from this requisite if they can show that fulfilling it would expose them to violence within their family, threats or coercion.

Spanish Senate approves new abortion law. Associated Press, 25 February 2010

Cwm Taf NHS Trust said it was ‘engaged’ with the woman as part of the complaints procedure.

The patient, whose identity is not being made public, said her life had been ‘ruined’ by the revelations, with her grandmother ‘totally disowning’ her. Her children are aged 18 months and almost three.

She said she now regretted having the abortion because of the impact it had had on her family. ‘It was the hardest decision in the world. When I found out I was pregnant again, I didn’t think I would cope. Me and my boyfriend talked about having a termination. It certainly wasn’t something we did lightly.’

The woman added: ‘I’m a good mum and I love my kids. But I couldn’t have another baby. My boyfriend was off to the Army - I would have been left on my own with three babies.’

She said they decided not to tell her family about the medical abortion three months into the pregnancy. Instead she told her parents that she had gone for tests for a stomach complaint. The next day she visited her grandmother in Merthyr, and when asked, said her hospital tests had gone all right, BBC News Online reports.

She said her grandmother called out ‘liar’. ‘She told me her friend working at the hospital had told her all about it. She is a very strong Catholic and couldn’t forgive me.’

The woman said she had made a formal complaint to the hospital and had an apology. But she said she felt like she has been ‘fobbed off’. ‘Anyone who goes in hospital should be entitled to privacy and confidentiality. But a termination is even more personal and delicate - people don’t understand what you are going through deciding not to have a baby.’

A hospital spokesman said: ‘We can confirm that we are currently engaged with her as part of the complaints procedure. Consequently it would be in appropriate for us to comment further on this case.’

Hospital worker ‘told family of teenager’s abortion’. BBC News Online, 1 February 2010

The government had pledged in 1999 to halve teenage pregnancy rates among under-18s in England by this year but is widely expected to miss that target, BBC News Online reports.

The ONS data shows for every 1,000 girls aged between 15 and 17 in England and Wales, there were just over 40 pregnancies.

The North East had the highest under-18 conception rate in 2008, with 49 per 1,000 women age 15-17 falling pregnant. The East of England had the lowest rate with 31.4 per 1,000 young women getting pregnant.

The number of girls aged 13 to 15 getting pregnant fell by 6% in 2008, with 7.8 conceptions per 1,000 girls compared with 8.3 in 2007. Since 2002 the number of teenage girls falling pregnant in England and Wales has been steadily falling, despite a slight rise in 2007.

The ONS statistics show there were an estimated 887,800 conceptions among women of all age groups in England and Wales in 2008, a decrease of 0.9% on the 2007 figure of 895,900.

Conception rates decreased in all age groups between 2007 and 2008, with the exception of women aged 40 and above, where conceptions remained at 12.6 per 1,000 women. While conception rates in the 30-34 and 35-39 age groups fell slightly in 2008, they have risen steadily over the past 10 years.

The number of conceptions outside marriage in England and Wales increased slightly from 56% in 2007 to 57% in 2008.

The number of conceptions outside of marriage which resulted in the birth of a chid was 67%, compared with 93% of conceptions inside marriage. The proportion of all conceptions resulting in a birth was 78%.

The ONS figures for conceptions cover those that result in a live or still birth or are terminated by abortion; they do not include miscarriages or illegal abortions.

Although the number of teenage pregnancies in England and Wales fell in 2008, the government is highly unlikely to meet its 1999 pledge to halve teenage pregnancies in England by 2010. Figures from the Department of Children, Schools and Families show rates in England are down by just 13.3% from 1999 to 2008.

The government allocated £260m to reducing teenage pregnancy and, in 2009, ministers announced an extra £20.5m funding package for contraception resources.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls defended ministers’ record and said the statistics showed the rate of teenage pregnancies was now the lowest it had been for well over a decade.

But Mr Balls conceded it was going to be ‘really hard’ to achieve the pledged ‘ambitious target’ of a 50% decline on 1998 figures by 2010.

Children’s Minister Dawn Primarolo welcomed the ONS figures, saying teenage pregnancy was no longer a rising problem.

‘Last year’s increase was very disappointing so I am particularly pleased that today’s statistics put us back on track,’ she said.

Gill Frances, chairwoman of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, said it also welcomed the teenage pregnancy strategy being back on its long term downward trend.

‘Nationally, statutory Sex and Relationships Education will give an extra benefit and government must also ensure all young people have access to contraceptive and sexual health services,’ she said.

Teenage pregnancy rate falls. BBC News Online, 24 February 2010.

Conceptions in England and Wales, 2008. ONS, 24 February 2010 [.pdf]

Pressure groups claim this amendment would allow faith schools to ignore requirements in the bill to teach it in a balanced way, respecting diversity.

Mr Balls dismissed suggestions that the amendment to the Children, Schools and Families Bill, which was revealed by BBC News Online on 19 February, represented an ‘opt out’ for faith schools.

He told the Today programme:

‘A Catholic faith school can say to their pupils we believe as a religion contraception is wrong but what they can’t do is therefore say that they are not going to teach them about contraception to children and how to access contraception.

What this changes is that for the first time these schools cannot just ignore these issues or teach only one side of the argument. They also have to teach that there are different views on homosexuality. They cannot teach homophobia. They must explain civil partnership.’

But opponents say this requirement was already in the Children, Schools and Families Bill.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, of the Accord Coalition which calls for an end to what it sees as religious discrimination in school staffing and admissions, told Today he was ‘astonished and saddened’ that Mr Balls had chosen effectively to give faith schools an opt-out.

‘If a school doesn’t approve of contraception or abortion or homosexuality, then it can give that message or it can omit certain facts. We know there are some faith schools which take a very negative view.’

Under the plans, all schools are to be required to teach children aged seven to 11 about relationships including marriage, same sex and civil partnerships, divorce and separation under Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education. Secondary school pupils are to learn about sexual activity, reproduction, contraception as well as same sex relationships.

The bill states the subject is to be taught in a way that promotes equality, accepts diversity and emphasises both rights and responsibilities.

This requirement could have been problematic for schools governed by religions that are specifically opposed to homosexuality and contraception. About a third of schools in England are faith schools.

In a statement on its website, the Catholic Education Service says the amendment, which was tabled by Children’s Secretary Ed Balls, was secured after a period of ‘extensive lobbying’. But it refused to comment on the issue BBC News Online reports.

Liberal Democrat Children’s spokesman David Laws said the amendment was ‘a serious and undesirable U-turn’. He told Today:

‘This government hasn’t had a bad record over the years in trying to challenge things like homophobia. Now, with this amendment it’s undermined a lot potentially, that it’s been achieving. I think it will upset many people who believe that in today’s Britain we should have a society where the taxpayer should not be subsidising prejudice.’

The British Humanist Association is also among those who have criticised the amendment. Its chief executive Andrew Copson said the amendment effectively gave a licence to faith schools to teach sex and relationships educations in ways that were homophobic, gender discriminatory and violated principles of human rights.

Sex education ‘not watered down,’ says Ed Balls. BBC News Online, 23 February 2010

‘I’m not prepared to say I regret having to do my duty,’ he says in an RTE documentary about the case, broadcast on 22 February. ‘I do of course regret the upset, the sadness, the trauma, which was visited on everybody involved but that’s something which I can’t do anything more about.’

In February 1992, after the case was brought to his attention by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Whelehan sought a High Court injunction to prevent the girl, known only as Miss X, from leaving the country for an abortion. The girl had been raped by a friend of her father in Rathfarnham when she was 13.

Less than a decade earlier, a referendum was passed amending Article 40.3.3 of the Irish constitution to give protection to the unborn child.

‘The problem was stark,’ Whelehan told the Scannal programme. ‘There was an unborn child with a constitutional right to life. There was nobody to advocate the right of that child to be born other than the attorney general.

‘I don’t want this to sound harsh but where the mother of the child, who is entitled to have its life protected, decides to seek an abortion the only mechanism in our system is for the attorney general to intervene and make a case for the child to be born alive.’

Seán Duignan, who was government press secretary at the time, told the programme: ‘I remember Harry and [Albert Reynolds] kicking it back and forward, arguing about it and Albert going “Harry, you’ve got to think politically occasionally” and Harry saying “No, you can’t get over the legal and the constitutional implications, taoiseach”.

‘Both sides of the house were adamant that Harry should have taken advice. What they really meant by that is that he should have delayed, that the file should have dropped behind a radiator for a while… at least until the girl was out of the country and that she had her abortion.’

Whelehan acknowledges that there was pressure on him to turn a blind eye, the Sunday Times reports, but that would have meant failing to do his duty. ‘I know it was suggested by many people that I should have done nothing and that could never have been a proper or honourable action, nor could it have in any way put me in a position of discharging my constitutional obligation to protect or to at least seek to protect the right of that unborn child to be born,’ he says.

The case of the Attorney General v X was heard in the High court in February 1992. Even though the girl threatened suicide, Justice Declan Costello upheld the rights of the unborn child and granted the injunction. Banned from travelling for 10 months, Miss X appealed to the Supreme Court and it lifted the High Court order by a four-to-one majority.

The majority opinion held that a woman had a right to an abortion under Article 40.3.3 if there was ‘a real and substantial risk’ to her life. This was never subsequently provided for in Irish legislation by subsequent governments.

X case judge Harry Whelehan: I was only doing my duty. The Sunday Times, 21 February 2010

Vacuum aspiration is a method of abortion where a cannula is inserted into the uterus and gentle suction is applied to remove the pregnancy. The suction is created by an electric vacuum machine or a hand-held syringe called a manual vacuum aspirator.

Pain is managed with a combination of oral analgesia (such as ibuprofen) and local anaesthetic (lidocaine) injected into or next to the cervix. Lidocaine gel can also be used in the cervical canal. The injection or gel reduces discomfort from the passage of instruments or dilators through the cervix while the analgesic is intended to calm the pain from uterine cramping during the evacuation.

Another important aspect of pain control during these procedures is good communication with the woman about what is happening and ‘vocal local’ - comforting or distracting conversation with the woman which is frequently done by an assistant and/or the surgeon.

Q) What advantages does this have over general anaesthetic?

Probably the greatest advantage of local over general anaesthetic is the length of the recovery period. The recovery period from a general anaesthetic is typically 2 hours but only about 30 minutes, or sometimes less, with a local anaesthetic.

In addition, women do not experience drowsiness or other after-effects of sedating medication given with a general anaesthetic. This may help women feel more in control during the procedure and be important for women who need to drive after the procedure, work, or care for children or other family members or who do not have an escort to look after them afterwards.

There is also no need to fast for a local anaesthetic. This can be very helpful for women with medical problems, such as diabetes. Finally, for some women, it may be safer to have a procedure under local rather than general anaesthesia, for example very obese women.

Q) What are the disadvantages?

Administration of analgesia and local anaesthetic reduces the pain associated with a vacuum aspiration but does not remove it completely. Experiencing any pain may be unacceptable to some women, as may remaining awake during the entire procedure.

Although a vacuum aspiration is short in duration (about 10 minutes from start to finish, with the aspiration lasting only a few minutes), women who have this procedure will need to remain calm and controlled throughout for the procedure to be performed safely. It is important that women understand what they will experience during a procedure under local anaesthetic and actively choose to have their abortion by this method.

Q) To what gestation can vacuum aspiration under local anaesthetic be performed?

At BPAS, we currently offer manual vacuum aspiration under local anaesthetic to 12 weeks’ gestation. Electric vacuum aspiration can be performed to about 14-15 weeks’ gestation. This isn’t to say that there is an absolute gestational age limit to which abortion procedures under local anaesthetic can be performed. It is even possible to perform dilatation and evacuation under local anaesthetic safely and satisfactorily at advanced gestational ages.

Q) What is the scope of BPAS’ provision of this method?

At present, most surgical abortions performed at BPAS are done under general anaesthetic but our provision of local anaesthetic procedures is increasing. I would like to see BPAS expand the gestational ages at which abortions are performed under local anaesthetic as it offers yet another option, along with medical abortion, general anaesthetic and conscious sedation, for a woman to have the abortion procedure she feels is right for her.

It may also allow us to care for some women with medical problems who cannot have a general anaesthetic in a freestanding clinic access their abortion with us. This is important because it can be difficult to locate an NHS provider for some women, particularly after about 16 weeks’ gestation.

This article appears in the Winter 2010 print edition of Abortion Review, which can be downloaded for free here.

The reaction from black leaders was mixed, but the Too Many Aborted campaign, which so far is unique only to Georgia, is drawing support from other anti-abortion groups across the country, the Independent says.

The billboards went up in Atlanta in February and urge black women to ‘get outraged’.

The effort is sponsored by Georgia Right to Life, which also is pushing legislation that aims to ban abortions based on race.

Black women accounted for the majority of abortions in Georgia in 2006, even though blacks make up just a third of the state’s population, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationally, black women were more than three times as likely to get an abortion in 2006 compared with white women, according to the CDC.

Anti-abortion advocates say the procedure has always been linked to race. They claim Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to eradicate minorities by putting birth control clinics in their neighbourhoods, a charge that Planned Parenthood denies.

‘The language in the billboard is using messages of fear and shame to target women of colour,’ said Leola Reis, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Georgia. ‘If we want to reduce the number of abortions and unintended pregnancies, we need to work as a community to make sure we get quality affordable health care services to as many women and men as possible.’

US anti-abortion activists target black community. Independent, 15 February 2010

The proportion of young girls who become pregnant in the UK’s ten poorest areas is in fact 5.4 per cent.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, said:

‘The very fact that people can repeatedly get the facts on teenage pregnancy so wrong — ten times wrong — shows that their stereotyped expectations of young people are totally out of sync with reality.’

Britain has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, with more than 41 girls in every 1,000 aged 15 to 17 falling pregnant each year.

The Two Nations document claims: ‘In the most deprived areas, 54 per cent are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18, compared to just 19 per cent in the least deprived areas.’

The claim was based on statistics for the ten most deprived areas of the UK — Birmingham, Easington, Hackney, Islington, Knowsley, Liverpool, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newham and Tower Hamlets. The claim was made three times in the document, The Times reports.

The latter figure of a 19 per cent pregnancy rate in the least deprived areas is also wrong. In the London borough of Richmond upon Thames, one of Britain’s least deprived areas, the true rate of teenage pregnancy is 1.6 per cent, or 15.7 per 1,000, while in rural Rutland it is 1.8 per cent or 18.1 per 1,000.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, was unrepentant about the error, claiming that the overall point was clear. ‘The whole document is making the argument that the whole gap between rich and poor in this country is growing after 13 years of Labour government,’ Mr Osborne told Sky News.

A Conservative Party spokesman agreed, saying: ‘A decimal point was left out in a calculation. It makes no difference at all to the conclusions of a wide-ranging report which shows that Labour have consistently let down the poorest in Britain.’

But Harriet Harman, the Leader of the Commons, said that a series of errors showed that the Conservatives were misleading the public.

‘They are determined always to put out a black view of Britain, to put Britain down, and because of that they just can’t be trusted with the statistics,’ she said. ‘This comes hard on the heels of them being told off by the UK Statistics Authority for saying that violent crime was going up when in fact it was going down.’

Tories under attack over teen pregnancy blunder. The Times (London), 15 February 2010

In the year 200 AD, there were approximately 180million human beings on the planet Earth. And at that time a Christian philosopher called Tertullian argued: ‘We are burdensome to the world, the resources are scarcely adequate for us… already nature does not sustain us.’ In other words, there were too many people for the planet to cope with and we were bleeding Mother Nature dry.

Well today, nearly 180million people live in the Eastern Half of the United States alone, in the 26 states that lie to the east of the Mississippi River. And far from facing hunger or destitution, many of these people – especially the 1.7million who live on the tiny island of Manhattan – have quite nice lives.

In the early 1800s, there were approximately 980million human beings on the planet Earth. One of them was the population scaremonger Thomas Malthus, who argued that if too many more people were born then ‘premature death would visit mankind’ – there would be food shortages, ‘epidemics, pestilence and plagues’, which would ‘sweep off tens of thousands [of people]’.

Well today, more than the entire world population of Malthus’s era now lives in China alone: there are 1.3billion human beings in China. And far from facing pestilence, plagues and starvation, the living standards of many Chinese have improved immensely over the past few decades. In 1949 life expectancy in China was 36.5 years; today it is 73.4 years. In 1978 China had 193 cities; today it has 655 cities. Over the past 30 years, China has raised a further 235million of its citizens out of absolute poverty – a remarkable historic leap forward for humanity.

In 1971 there were approximately 3.6billion human beings on the planet Earth. And at that time Paul Ehrlich, a patron of the Optimum Population Trust and author of a book called The Population Bomb, wrote about his ‘shocking’ visit to New Delhi in India. He said: ‘The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved slowly through the mob, [we wondered] would we ever get to our hotel…?’

You’ll be pleased to know that Paul Ehrlich did make it to his hotel, through the mob of strange brown people shitting in the streets, and he later wrote in his book that as a result of overpopulation ‘hundreds of millions of people will starve to death’. He said India couldn’t possibly feed all its people and would experience some kind of collapse around 1980.

Well today, the world population is almost double what it was in 1971 – then it was 3.6billion, today it is 6.7billion – and while there are still social problems of poverty and malnutrition, hundreds of millions of people are not starving to death. As for India, she is doing quite well for herself. When Ehrlich was writing in 1971 there were 550million people in India; today there are 1.1billion. Yes there’s still poverty, but Indians are not starving; in fact India has made some important economic and social leaps forward and both life expectancy and living standards have improved in that vast nation.

What this potted history of population scaremongering ought to demonstrate is this: Malthusians are always wrong about everything.

The extent of their wrongness cannot be overstated. They have continually claimed that too many people will lead to increased hunger and destitution, yet the precise opposite has happened: world population has risen exponentially over the past 40 years and in the same period a great many people’s living standards and life expectancies have improved enormously. Even in the Third World there has been improvement – not nearly enough, of course, but improvement nonetheless. The lesson of history seems to be that more and more people are a good thing; more and more minds to think and hands to create have made new cities, more resources, more things, and seem to have given rise to healthier and wealthier societies.

Yet despite this evidence, the population scaremongers always draw exactly the opposite conclusion. Never has there been a political movement that has got things so spectacularly wrong time and time again yet which keeps on rearing its ugly head and saying: ‘This time it’s definitely going to happen! This time overpopulation is definitely going to cause social and political breakdown!’

There is a reason Malthusians are always wrong. It isn’t because they’re stupid… well, it might be a little bit because they’re stupid. But more fundamentally it is because, while they present their views as fact-based and scientific, in reality they are driven by a deeply held misanthropy that continually overlooks mankind’s ability to overcome problems and create new worlds.

The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction.

The fact that the presentational arguments can change so fundamentally over time, while the core belief in ‘too many people’ remains the same, really shows that this is a prejudicial outlook in search of a social or scientific justification; it is prejudice looking around for the latest trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because behind the new language they adopt every few decades, they are really driven by narrow-mindedness, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its future.

The first mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate how society can change to embrace more and more people. They make the schoolboy scientific error of imagining that population is the only variable, the only thing that grows and grows, while everything else – including society, progress and discovery – stays roughly the same. That is why Malthus was wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because he could not foresee how the industrial revolution would massively transform society and have an historic impact on how we produce and transport food and many other things. Population is not the only variable – mankind’s vision, growth, his ability to rethink and tackle problems: they are variables, too.

The second mistake Malthusians always make is to imagine that resources are fixed, finite things that will inevitably run out. They don’t recognise that what we consider to be a resource changes over time, depending on how advanced society is. That is why the Christian Tertullian was wrong in 200 AD when he said ‘the resources are scarcely adequate for us’. Because back then pretty much the only resources were animals, plants and various metals. Tertullian could not imagine that, in the future, the oceans, oil and uranium would become resources, too. The nature of resources changes as society changes – what we consider to be a resource today might not be one in the future, because other, better, more easily-exploited resources will hopefully be discovered or created. Today’s cult of the finite, the discussion of the planet as a larder of scarce resources that human beings are using up, really speaks to finite thinking, to a lack of future-oriented imagination.

And the third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate the genius of mankind. Population scaremongering springs from a fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, simply the users of resources, simply the destroyers of things, as a kind of ‘plague’ on poor Mother Nature, when in fact human beings are first and foremost producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of things and the makers of history. Malthusians insultingly refer to newborn babies as ‘another mouth to feed’, when in the real world another human being is another mind that can think, another pair of hands that can work, and another person who has needs and desires that ought to be met.

We don’t merely use up finite resources; we create infinite ideas and possibilities. The 6.7billion people on Earth have not raped and destroyed this planet, we have humanised it. And given half a chance – given a serious commitment to overcoming poverty and to pursuing progress – we would humanise it even further. Just as you wouldn’t listen to that guy who wears a placard saying ‘The End of the World is Nigh’ if he walked up to you and said ‘this time it really is nigh’, so you shouldn’t listen to the always-wrong Malthusians. Instead, join spiked in opposing the population panickers.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked, where this article was first published. The above is an edited extract of a speech given at the Wellcome Collection in London on Thursday 12 November.

Also read:

Population debate section, Abortion Review

The £2m TV, radio, internet and poster campaign is part of a government strategy announced last year to reduce violence against women and girls. Home Secretary Alan Johnson said it was essential to change attitudes in order to stop abuse against females. He said:

‘We want to see young people in safe and happy relationships and this means tackling attitudes towards abuse at an early age, before patterns of violence can occur. We hope this campaign will help teenagers to recognise the signs of abuse and equip them with the knowledge and confidence to seek help, as well as understanding the consequences of being abusive or controlling in a relationship.’

The campaign follows research by the NSPCC, which suggested that a quarter of girls aged 13 to 17 had experienced physical violence from a boyfriend and a third had been pressured into sexual acts they did not want. The children’s charity said it was alarmed by the number of young people who viewed abuse in relationships as normal.

One version of the advert shows two teenagers lying on a bed watching television. When the girl gets a text message from a friend the boy dislikes he loses his temper, throwing her phone to the floor and grabbing her by the hair.  The advert’s director Shane Meadows said he wanted to highlight the problem of emotional violence, including verbal insults and controlling behaviour such as monitoring text messages.

‘It’s a message I fundamentally believe in, and it’s what most of my films have been about - finding another way of leading your life. It’s a very powerful and valuable lesson,’ he said.

Another survey, reported by BBC News Online on the same day, claimed that a majority of women believe some rape victims should take responsibility for what happened. Almost three quarters of the women who believed this said if a victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.

The survey of more than 1,000 people in London marked the 10th anniversary of the Havens service for rape victims. The online survey, titled Wake Up To Rape, polled 1,061 people aged 18 to 50, comprising 712 women and 349 men.

More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack. The study found that women were less forgiving of the victim than men.

Of the women who believed some victims should take responsibility, 71% thought a person should accept responsibility when getting into bed with someone, compared with 57% of men.

Elizabeth Harrison from the Havens said there was never an excuse for forcing a woman to do something she did not want to.

‘Clearly, women are in a position where they need to take responsibility for themselves - but whatever you wear and whatever you do does not give somebody else the right to rape you. It’s important people take the time to actually look at what they are doing and make sure the person they are with is actually wanting to go ahead with what they are proposing.’

The survey also found more than one in 10 people were unsure whether they would report being raped to the police, and 2% said they would definitely not do so. The main reasons were being too embarrassed or ashamed (55%), wanting to forget it had happened (41%) and not wanting to go to court (38%).

Meanwhile, the survey suggested that many people are relaxed about their safety. Almost half of people have walked home via side streets on their own. One in five has been so drunk they have lost their memory, while one in five has got into a taxi without checking whether it is licensed.

When asked about their own experiences, more than a third of those polled said they had been in a situation where they could have been made to have sex against their will. Women are more likely to have been in this situation - 40% compared to 20%.  And one in five adults had been in a situation where they were made to have sex when they did not want to. This had happened to more women (23%) than men (20%).

The Home Office said it had introduced a number of measures to the service provided to rape victims, including new police and prosecutors’ guidance, monitoring of services and funding for support for rape victims. A spokeswoman said:

‘The government is determined to ensure that every victim has immediate access to the services and support they need so that more victims have the confidence to come forward and report these crimes and we can bring the perpetrators to justice.’

Teenage domestic violence tackled by advert campaign. BBC News Online, 15 February 2010

Teen girls abused by boyfriends warns NSPCC. Press release, 1 September 2009.

Women say some rape victims should take blame - survey. BBC News Online, 15 February 2010

Wake Up To Rape Research: Summary Report. Prepared by Opinion Matters, for The Havens (Sexual Assault Referral Centres). [.pdf]