UPDATED 25/09/05 WITH RESPONSE TO GOVERNMENT REPORT

First class investigative journalism reveals UK abortion agencies facilitate illegal abortions on highly developed babies past the UK legal time limit and pay staff bonuses for more abortions

Following on from the shocking undercover investigation in the Sunday Telegraph last October, which revealed that hundreds of women were being referred by BPAS to a Spanish clinic for illegal abortions on perfectly healthy babies up to 30 weeks old, breaking both UK abortion law which prohibits abortion on healthy babies after 24 weeks, and Spanish law which is even stricter, The Sunday Telegraph reports today that another Spanish clinic, the Mediterrània Mèdica clinic in Valencia, is offering commission to British abortion agencies to refer women to their clinic for illegal abortions past the UK 24 week time limit. It is incredible that nearly a year has passed and these shocking revelations are repeating themselves.

It has also been revealed in the Mail on Sunday last week that"staff at one clinic were paid bonuses for maximising the weekly number of terminations is shocking and disturbing. Marie Stopes International, the organisation involved, is a registered charity bearing a revered name, though it is also a company limited by guarantee whose chief executive is paid £150,000 a year." Today, The The Mail on Sunday reports that "This week there are equally shocking revelations that another charity is paying doctors to authorise abortions without even meeting the patient. Both organisations receive large incomes from the taxpayer for carrying out terminations on behalf of the NHS."

The Sunday Telegraph revelations were so shocking because of the casual attitude of the staff at BPAS and at the Spanish clinic to the termination of the lives of such developed babies and the way in which the Spanish clinic staff openly admitted to falsifying records in order to get around the law by claiming there was a medical need. After months of seeing beautiful pictures of unborn babies at 12 weeks, the medical reality that babies can survive if born after 21 weeks, and the lyrical beauty of the undercover reporter’s description of her 26 week old very much wanted baby in the abortion clinic scan, no one is going to fall for the euphemisms BPAS have used for so long which claim that the baby is just tissue. And it is impossible to read the Sunday Telegraph investigation without feeling desperately sad and angry on behalf of the women who undergo these late term abortions, when they clearly need help and support to continue with the pregnancy.

When the revelations that BPAS were referring for illegal abortions first emerged in October last year, the then Secretary of State for Health, John Reid, ordered an immediate investigation by the Department of Health and said "If there is evidence that the will of Parliament is being thwarted and that the law of a fellow European country is being broken by an organisation in receipt of public money, this would be a very serious situation indeed. If The Sunday Telegraph lets me have the material I will ask that this matter is looked into immediately." The Charities Commission also began an investigation, the police were asked by the ProLife Alliance to investigate BPAS. The Guardian reported that David Davies has questioned why the report by the Department of Health into BPAS has not been published yet (see David Davies’s blog.) With more revelations about Marie Stopes and BPAS it is clear that decisive action is needed from the Government to penalise abortion agencies, which are flouting our law by referring women for illegal abortions, is long overdue.

UPDATES:

The Guardian, Abortion provider under fire from chief medical officer

ProLife Allaince press release, Report on BPAS Fudges the Issue of Legality of Spanish Abortion Referrals

Report into abortions scandal was delayed 'to spare Government embarrassment'(25/09/2005)