Editor's note. The following can be found on the blog of John Smeaton, executive director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) at http://spuc-director.blogspot.com/2010/11/durham-debate-exposes-stale-pro.html

Last month Anthony Ozimic (pictured second from right) SPUC's communications manager, debated at the Durham Union Society against the motion "This House believes abortion is a fundamental human right". Joining him was Jamie Bogle (pictured far right), chairman of the Catholic Union of Great Britain and a long-standing collaborator with SPUC. On SPUC's website you can read the speeches from Anthony and Jamie. You can also watch a video of a six-minute extract from Anthony's speech below.

Speaking in favour of the motion were Dr Jane Mann (pictured far left), the founder of the UK's first dedicated medical "service" concentrating on abortion, and Alison Peters (second from left), the head of Marie Stopes's Bristol centre. The result was very close. The first voice vote taken at the end of the debate was too close for the chairman to call, so she had to call for another one, which was also very close but which she judged to be in favour of the motion.

Anthony tells me that the pro-abortion speakers had nothing new to say. Dr Mann wheeled out the old pro-abortion chestnuts:

• unborn children are merely "potential human beings"---when in fact unborn children are full human beings with potential. Jamie Bogle easily disposed of her argument and cogently laid out the evidence for the humanity of unborn children. Dr Mann later contradicted herself by admitting that unborn children were human lives.

• legal abortion is necessary to save women from illegal abortion - when in fact legal abortion is not safe, and the pro-abortion lobby has a track-record of massively exaggerating statistics related to illegal abortion

• equal rights for women - when in fact the pioneers of equal rights for women were opposed to abortion because they believed abortion was contrary to women's dignity.

Mrs. Peters had very little to say, basing her argument on her own experience (which included an abortion) and on abortion as a necessary back-up for a free sex life and in case of contraceptive failure.

The narrowness of the vote [on the debate] and the staleness of the pro-abortion speakers' arguments is a sign that the pro-life case has real power to make inroads into the culture of death.