Ann Marie Furedi (; born 31 October 1960) is the former chief executive of the

British Pregnancy Advisory Service The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) is a British charity whose stated purpose is to avoid unwanted pregnancy by advocating and providing high quality, affordable services to prevent or end unwanted pregnancies with contraception or by ab ...

, the UK's largest independent

abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregn ...

provider. Furedi has worked in pro-choice organisations for more than 20 years, mainly in policy and communications. She ran the press office of the UK Family Planning Association before leading Birth Control Trust, a charity that advocated the need for research and development in methods of contraception and abortion. Before joining BPAS, as its chief executive in June 2003, Furedi was Director of Policy and Communications for the UK regulator of infertility treatment and embryo research, the

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom. It is a statutory body that regulates and inspects all clinics in the United ...

(HFEA). She is regarded as a leading

pro-choice Abortion-rights movements, also referred to as pro-choice movements, advocate for the right to have legal access to induced abortion services including elective abortion. They seek to represent and support women who wish to terminate their pre ...

advocate and spokesperson, often appearing in the media representing this perspective. Prior to her career in pro-choice organisations, Furedi was a journalist, specialising in healthcare features for women's magazines, including ''

Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan may refer to: Food and drink * Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo" History * Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953 Hotels and resorts * Cosmopoli ...

'' and ''

Company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...

'', sometimes writing under her maiden name, Bradley. She is also known as Ann Burton. In the early 1980s, she worked for the

National Council for Civil Liberties Liberty, formerly, and still formally, called the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), is an advocacy group and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, which challenges unjust laws, protects civil liberties and promotes hu ...

as its Gay Rights Officer. In 1982, she married

Frank Furedi Frank Furedi ( hu, Füredi Ferenc; born 3 May 1947) is a Hungarian-Canadian academic and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. He is well known for his work on sociology of fear, education, therapy culture, paranoid parent ...

, the founder and then leader of the British Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Ann Furedi was a contributor to the party's '' LM Magazine'' until it folded in 2000 after being found to have libelled ITN journalists. She has also contributed to ''

Spiked Online ''Spiked'' (also written as ''sp!ked'') is a British Internet magazine focusing on politics, culture and society. The magazine was founded in 2001 with the same editor and many of the same contributors as ''Living Marxism'', which had closed i ...

'', an online magazine, that identifies itself as libertarian humanist. For that magazine, she has written in support of

sex-selective abortion Sex-selective abortion is the practice of terminating a pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the infant. The selective abortion of female fetuses is most common where male children are valued over female children, especially in parts of Eas ...

. Furedi is the Vice-Chairman of the Governing Body at

MidKent College MidKent College (formerly Mid-Kent College of Higher and Further Education) is a further education college in Kent, England. It runs courses from two separate campuses in Maidstone and Medway, including a number of higher education courses. Th ...

.Meet the MidKent College Governors

References

External links

BPAS official site
1961 births British abortion-rights activists Living people {{UK-activist-stub