Sunday, 24 Nov 2024

Pregnant MP confronted with anti-abortion posters calls for boycott

An advertising company has apologised after a pregnant MP accused it of taking money to ‘harass the women of Walthamstow’.

Labour’s Stella Creasy called for a boycott of Clear Channel because it was tolerating ‘hatred’ by selling advertising space in her north-east London constituency to anti-abortion activists.

Over the weekend, Ms Creasy – who announced in July that she was pregnant following numerous miscarriages – hit out at anti-abortion activists for a poster claiming to show an aborted 24-week old girl next to an image of her face.

The poster read: ‘Your MP is working hard… to make this a human right.’

Now the MP wants companies to consider not buying from Clear Channel, after it sold a new advert showing a nine-week old fetus and a link to the website stopstella.com.



The latest image has already been defaced with white paint, but the Christian American group Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform is expected to continue its campaign – even as the advertising company backtracked on its decision to sell to the group.

A Clear Channel spokesperson said: ‘We sincerely apologise for any offense that has been caused by a recent campaign which we ran in Walthamstow on behalf of a customer. We’re taking immediate action to remove this campaign.

‘As an Out-of-Home media owner, we take a neutral stance towards all advertising and have robust procedures in place to ensure that the creatives we run comply with the UK Advertising Codes. While this campaign met these requirements, we accept that the content should have been scrutinised in greater detail and should not have been displayed.’

The company added that it would ‘review internal processes’ to ‘prevent an issue like this happening again.’

Today, in a tweet directed at the advertising company, Ms Creasy asked: ‘How much money did you take from (the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform) to harass the women of Walthamstow? And why should any company ever advertise with you again given you are willing to put them alongside such hatred?’

Ms Creasy had previously labelled activists from the Centre ‘vile and awful people’, criticised the police response and urged supporters to donate to the charity Abortion Support Network.

Having suggested the original image made her feel ‘physically sick’, the MP praised her constituents for their support, and shared an image showing one advert being defaced.

On its website, the Centre writes: ‘We are saturating Walthamstow, MP Stella Creasy’s constituency, with the humanity of the unborn child and the reality of abortion. Whilst highlighting to constituents how their MP is working hard to promote abortion as a “human right”.’

The group added that it was ‘holding multiple public education displays’, and ‘highlighting the humanity of the unborn child on billboards and advertising kiosks around Walthamstow.’

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