About us
Right To Life UK is a charitable organisation focused on life issues – abortion, assisted suicide and embryo research.
our core mission
We protect and defend the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death.
We do this through our work across education, politics, the media and through a large network of people in constituencies across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
We are committed to an evidence-based approach to life issues, uniting people from different political ideologies and philosophical beliefs (including those who are non-religious, religious, or agnostic).
Right To Life UK was founded by the late Phyllis Bowman. Phyllis was one of the first major campaigners on the abortion issue globally, launching her work to protect the unborn child and increase support for women facing unplanned pregnancies, prior to the passing of the Abortion Act in 1967.
She then proceeded to lead a very large network of people right across the UK to undertake educational, political, media and grassroots work to defend the right to life of every human being. Right To Life UK was founded by Phyllis to ensure that her pioneering work on life issues could be continued on a larger scale. Right To Life UK continues her work today, uniting people from around the country to focus on protecting and defending human life.
We have included below highlights from some of our recent work to demonstrate how we are making a positive difference.
Here are some of the results we are already achieving
attempt to introduce abortion on demand, for any reason, up to birth
In July 2021, the abortion lobby staged a major attempt to introduce abortion on demand, for any reason, up to birth, to England and Wales by hijacking the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
We have attempted, wherever possible, to have an important influence on the media narrative on life issues.
While this can often be difficult, with much of the media hostile to the right-to-life point of view, there are a number of key areas where we have the upper hand in terms of public support. We have been able to target these vital areas to shape the debate towards a broader recognition of the right to life of the unborn child.
Recently, this has seen us feature in over 600 print and broadcast media pieces.
Our focus on mainstream media is important because this allows us to reach a large middle ground of people on this issue, with a focus on areas where research shows the majority of people are very open to seeing a positive political and cultural change to our abortion laws.
Wherever possible, we have ensured that the spokespeople we use as the voice on these issues in the media are most likely to connect with mainstream audiences. This has included women who have been personally affected by abortion, people with disabilities and medical experts.
Working alongside a large group of MPs, Peers and other organisations, we provided strategy, media and digital support for one of the largest co-ordinated pro-life campaigns waged in the UK.
This ended in a decisive and, arguably, the largest win for the right-to-life movement in UK history.
We have taken the strategic, media and digital expertise that we built up from working with a large group of allies to defeat the Marris assisted suicide bill, to continue to ensure assisted suicide is not legalised.
The decisive win has meant that it has been difficult for the assisted suicide lobby to bring forward legislation on this issue. They have therefore been working quietly behind the scenes to try and grow their numbers ahead of another attempt to change the law. Recently we have focused on defensive work in Westminster to help limit their advance.
We have also faced an onslaught of activity from the assisted suicide lobby targeting the Royal Colleges, British Medical Association etc. to attempt to get them to drop their opposition to assisted suicide. This tactic is being used as it will make it easier for the assisted suicide lobby to pass legislation introducing assisted suicide if it does not face opposition from the medical establishment. We have been working with allied organisations to block these attempts.
We expect the assisted suicide lobby to shortly make a new attempt to introduce assisted suicide and continue their work to move the Royal Colleges from their current stance of opposing assisted suicide. We will be working hard to oppose them at every step along the way and will need your help with contacting MPs and other activities.
We have worked on growing our digital strategy to reach an even larger audience with smart, relevant, and viral-focused content.
Our social media channels across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and TikTok have reached a new generation of people on a massive scale allowing us to reach tens of millions of people across these platforms.
We have further built our in-house capability to produce TV advert quality videos in addition to other world-class digital content and campaign memes – all of this has been produced in-house for a fraction of the cost of hiring leading agencies.
Alongside our social media strategy, we have further developed our website with a focus on making it the go-to tool that any member of the public can use to easily contact their MPs and access the latest information on life issues.
Through our work to educate politicians on life issues, we are helping to build a better political situation for the unborn child and pregnant women.
We provide research for individual MPs and Peers in Parliament. Ongoing work includes developing briefings, building relationships with new parliamentarians and preparing any other research required by MPs and peers. We also provide media and political monitoring and a number of other activities to ensure that life issues stay on the agenda in Parliament, the media and in regions right across the UK.
Through this work, we aim to gain momentum by continuing to actively direct discussion on these topics.
Europe’s largest pro-life news service
keeping people up to date on the latest developments on life issues
Our website is the most viewed pro-life website in Europe and the fourth most viewed pro-life website in the world – at the core of the website is our digital news service.
This news service has been launched so that we can reach a far wider audience of people with UK-focussed, pro-life news that will keep people informed and help change even more hearts and minds on life issues.
We have designed the platform from the ground up so that is easily viewable across desktop, mobile and tablet, as increasing numbers of people are accessing content on their mobile phones and tablet devices. Our team have also put a lot of work into designing a look and feel for the service that is of professional standard similar to what you would expect to see from a major news outlet.
We currently have good relationships with a number of mainstream media outlets which ensures that we get to regularly comment in the media. That said, we can’t always ensure that these articles cover all the key points that the public need to know about a given issue.
Our news service ensures that we have a platform where reliable pro-life news and views are accessible to everyone in the UK and that we are not limited by what editors in major newspapers choose to publish.
We are working to develop a new generation of pro-lifers who are equipped to effectively communicate an evidence-based case for positive change on life issues.
Our Media and Communications Training Programme has provided a new generation of pro-lifers with an understanding of key pro-life issues and the ability to communicate these issues in the media. The programme equips participants with the necessary skills and techniques to deliver strong interviews, control difficult and hostile questions and to deliver an authentic perspective on life issues.
Our Internship Programme is introducing student right-to-lifers and new graduates to the world of the right-to-life movement and its work across the media, politics, education and grassroots engagement. Graduates of our programme have gone on to a number of important roles in a variety of sectors.
Together with our wider digital outreach, these programmes work to enable us to educate and develop a new movement of young people who are passionate about achieving positive change on life issues.
In everything we do, we begin by discerning how we can work together with as many of the large number of other organisations with which we already have a relationship, to ensure that we are having maximum impact.
We began by working with a large number of organisations to defeat the Marris assisted suicide Bill and our teamwork with these groups has continued to develop as our focus has moved to “beginning of life” issues.
Now, we are concentrating together on defeating the introduction of abortion on demand, for any reason, up to birth.