The annual Day for Life collection helps fund the crucial work of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, formerly the Linacre Centre, as well as projects which work to protect life at every stage and every condition.
The Anscombe Bioethics Centre is a Roman Catholic academic institute that engages with the moral questions arising in clinical practice and biomedical research. It brings to bear on those questions principles of natural law, virtue ethics, and the teaching of the Catholic Church, and seeks to develop the implications of that teaching for emerging fields of practice.
The Centre engages in scholarly dialogue with academics and practitioners of other traditions. It contributes to public policy debates as well as to debates and consultations within the Church. It runs educational programmes for, and gives advice to, Catholics and other interested healthcare professionals and biomedical scientists.
The Anscombe Bioethics Centre is an independent charity founded in 1977. It is not affiliated to any higher educational institution. It seeks to contribute to and collaborate with the academy through its publications and conferences, and through co-sponsoring events such as the annual Anscombe Memorial Lecture co-sponsored with Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. However, the Centre is not itself under the aegis, control, or sanction of the University of Oxford, or of any of its institutions, or of any other university. The academic activities of the Centre are overseen by the governors who take counsel from an independent academic advisory panel.
The Centre is a Catholic organisation though it is not an agency of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.