Christian Concern, the charity behind the Christian Legal Centre, says there are “serious questions” to be asked about abortion provider Marie Stopes International receiving millions of pounds from “porn baron” Phil Harvey.
The charity, which also backs the Wilberforce Academy, spoke out following reports that Harvey, who heads the Adam and Eve sex toy company, had donated at least £7.5 million in “cash and supplies” to Marie Stopes International (MSI), one of Britain’s leading abortion providers.
MSI, Christian Concern noted, claims it seeks to “empower women and girls to take control of their futures”, while Harvey’s foundation, DKT International, describes itself as “one of the world’s largest providers of family planning… and safe abortion products and services”.
DKT International lists “8m pregnancies averted” first in a list of “2019 DKT Health Impact[s]” on its website.
“Serious questions need to be asked about why MSI, an organisation which says it is dedicated to empowering women, has received millions in funding from an industry that achieves the opposite,” said Christian Concern’s chief executive, Andrea Williams.
Christian Concern stressed that, in its estimation, charitable giving by “sex and pornography” companies is designed to provide cover for “the disturbing reality” of their industry, citing scandals involving minors appearing on pornography websites and women being duped into participating in pornographic films under false pretences.
The Christian charity did note, however, that “more than 95 per cent of Marie Stopes abortions in the UK” are paid for by the taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS), according to its own online literature.
It also noted that the British government’s Department for International Development (DfID) — better known as the Foreign Aid department — had increased its donations to Marie Stopes by 5,000 per cent between 2006 and 2018, making it “the single biggest donor to the abortion provider” — and, ultimately, a bigger backer of British abortions than Phil Harvey’s “sex and pornography business”.