The A Word

Up to one in three women in the UK will experience abortion. Yet, we remain reticent to talk about it and to educate our young people about it. "The A Word" campaign aims to improve provision of education about pregnancy prevention, pregnancy decision-making and abortion in our schools.

Education For Choice has existed for the last 18 years to respond to the need for decent information on abortion for both young people and the professionals who work with them.  In this time we have worked closely with, and received funding from, The Department of Health and the Department of Education.  With the pending cuts to the health sector Education For Choice is looking at alternative sources of funding.  As part of that process we met with a professional fundraiser who suggested that we leave the word abortion out of our organisational description. She described it as 'the A word' and explained that "it puts people off".  It's precisely because the word abortion puts people off that Education For Choice needs to exist. Help us to ensure that abortion is talked about in an honest, impartial way with young people. Help us to put abortion in the spotlight for once and make sure that young people's right to unbiased factual information about their pregnancy options is at the top of the agenda.  Help us to reach more young people through our direct work in schools, colleges and pupil referral units. Help us to train more professionals around the country to deliver non-judgemental, balanced support around pregnancy decision-making.  Help us to combat the misinformation, myths and downright lies which circulate around abortion.

Our "A Word" campaign has one goal: to ensure that young people can receive accurate information and good quality education about abortion whoever they are and wherever they are. To achieve this we will:

1. Continue providing our pregnancy decision-making and abortion workshops in schools so that we can keep meeting young people finding out what they need to know and telling everyone how they can be supporting and educating young people better.
2. Conduct an audit of what and how schools in England are teaching about abortion within Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) and Religious Education to demonstrate the paucity of good quality abortion education.
3. Campaign for comprehensive SRE that includes evidence-based information and discussion about abortion with no opt outs for schools or parents
   

If you support "The A Word" then please sign your name to this statement of support. If you can, we would also appreciate you visiting our Just Giving page to help us reach our goal of raising at least £50,000 by the end of December. Any amount from £1 and above is gratefully appreciated. We are always looking for other forms of support, such as conducting online research, offering ideas of how to fundraise or helping to coordinate online and in-person events. To learn more about our work, visit our website. To discuss other ways of supporting us, or to learn about how we will use your donation, email us at efc (at) efc.org.uk.

Please support EFC and our work with young people and professionals by showing that you are not afraid of "The A Word". We ask you to tweet, blog and spread the word about our timely and important campaign.