Abortion provider Marie Stopes International’s rebrand to MSI Reproductive Choices has caused embarrassment as it has adopted the acronym of 20th century Italian fascist party.
Marie Stopes International recently changed its name to MSI Reproductive Choices to avoid its connection with eugenicist Marie Stopes. Marie Stopes was a member of the Eugenics Society and set up Britain’s first clinic in 1921 because of her belief that the “degenerate, feeble-minded, and unbalanced” should be eliminated from society. She went so far as to call for the compulsory sterilisation of those “totally unfit for parenthood”.
Having distanced itself from one person it would rather forget, MSI has now adopted the same name as the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), the Italian Social Movement. The party was formed in 1946 by supporters of the former Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. MSI is regarded as a successor of Mussolini’s Republican Fascist Party (PFR).
Illegal abortions, fake doctors and abortion bonuses
While changing its name to avoid continued scandal, MSI Reproductive Choices continues to perform millions of abortions across the globe. Last year the abortion provider has received over £340 million from the British tax payer over the last ten years, while continuing to be surrounded by scandal in more than just its poor choice of name.
In October 2020, the bodies of ten illegally aborted babies were found discarded and decomposing in a bin at a Marie Stopes International franchise ‘Medical Centre’ in Kenya resulting in the closure of the clinic.
In 2017, a damning report from the UK’s Care Quality Commission (CQC) accused Marie Stopes International (now MSI Reproductive Choices) of paying staff bonuses for persuading women to have abortions.
In addition, the CQC found the abortion group was not following proper sterilisation and infection control protocols and was improperly disposing of the bodies of the babies they aborted.
In 2016, Marie Stopes International was forced to suspend abortion services for a month after an unannounced inspection by the CQC found “dead foetuses lying in an open bin and staff trying to give a vulnerable, visibly distressed woman an abortion without her consent”.
Political commentator, Andrew Cusack, said: “Marie Stopes’s views should be recognised as repugnant to people today, but the organisation is only rejecting her in theory while still clinging to the practices she endorsed. It is historically ignorant not to mention strange that they’ve rebranded to MSI, the name of the post-war Italian fascist movement that held up the most extreme period of Mussolini’s rule as an example. But then as many of Marie Stopes’s sympathisers and fellow travellers praised the Italian dictator perhaps it’s not so surprising.”
Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said: “The fact that MSI Reproductive Choices has now chosen a name associated with twentieth century Italian fascism is unlikely to bother the abortion giant. The organisation was happy to use the name of eugenicist Marie Stopes from 1976 to 2020, knowing full well what she stood for. Given that their whole raison d’etre is to end the lives of an entire class of human beings – babies in the womb – adopting this particular neo-fascist acronym is sadly fitting”.
