Two abortion practitioners in England have been suspended for their roles in facilitating illegal sex-selection abortions as exposed by a recent undercover investigation the London Telegraph newspaper led.
The London Telegraph released a front-page expose‘ revealing how abortion practitioners in England are doing illegal late-term abortions under the radar and outside even the hardly-stringent abortion guidelines there. h
“Doctors at British clinics have been secretly filmed agreeing to terminate fetuses purely because they are either male or female. Clinicians admitted they were prepared to falsify paperwork to arrange the abortions even though it is illegal to conduct such “sex-selection” procedures,” the newspaper reported. “The Daily Telegraph carried out an investigation into sex-selection abortions after concerns were raised that the procedures were becoming increasingly common for cultural and social reasons. Acting on specific information, undercover reporters accompanied pregnant women to nine clinics in different parts of the country. In three instances doctors were recorded offering to arrange terminations after being told the mother-to-be did not want to go ahead with the pregnancy because of the sex of the unborn child.”
Now, the London Daily Mail newspaper reports Prabha Sivaraman, who works for private clinics and NHS hospitals in Manchester and told one woman who claimed she had a test showing she was having a girl “I don’t ask questions. If you want a termination, you want a termination” has been suspended.
“A spokesman for Pall Mall Medical said it had ‘suspended clinical contact’ with Miss Sivaraman. ‘The clinic does not condone in any way the referral for termination on the grounds of gender,'” he said, according to the newspaper. “The Pennine General Hospitals Trust, which runs North Manchester General Hospital, said that it was investigating the allegations but would not confirm if it had suspended Miss Sivaraman.”
Meanwhile, Claudine Domoney, a private consultant for a clinic in west London, who also agreed to do an abortion for a woman saying she was 18 weeks pregnant with a boy, has been suspended as well.
The newspaper reports: “Chelsea and Westminster Hospital said Miss Domoney had been suspended pending an investigation. A spokesman added: ‘We take extremely seriously the allegations made against one of its consultants, Claudine Domoney. The practice of “family balancing” through abortion is illegal. The Trust observes this law and does not offer termination of pregnancy on the basis of gender. We are investigating these very serious allegations as a matter of urgency.'”
The national pro-life charity Life responded to the suspensions saying that the quick response by the Department of Health to carry out an investigation into the revelations of sex selection abortions at some abortion facilities is welcome.
LIFE Spokesman Mark Bhagwandin says “For too long the industry has consistently abused, and in cases flagrantly broken the law on abortion with seeming impunity. In an industry where in practice there is abortion on demand it is no surprise that some abortionists see no problem terminating an unborn child simply because it is the wrong gender.”
“So vague and open to interpretation is the wording of Ground C that in the case reported the woman did not have to state she had a problem with her baby being a girl as she could simply have presented for an abortion under mental health conditions as happens in nine out of ten of the 200,000 abortion cases every year,” Bhagwandin continues. “The abortion law is wide open to interpretation of what counts as mental health issues. Indeed the definition and diagnosis of mental health issues is regularly made by GPs who do not specialize in psychiatric evaluation. If so many women are suffering mental health problems and require abortion, we will have failed them if we do not see a role for proper psychiatric evaluation. Indeed this failure can easily be seen in the abortion statistics showing that one in every three women who has an abortion has had at least one previous one. These women are not helped by offering the abortion conveyor belt as a solution to their crisis pregnancy. Women deserve better than this.”
The Life representative added, “We share the public’s anger to the revelation of sex selection abortions; we would like to see a similar response to the wanton termination, up to birth, of disabled babies in the womb. Surely it is as morally questionable to end a human life because he/she is disabled as it is for being of the wrong gender?”
Representatives with the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), a leading pro-life group in England, say sex-selection abortion is an inevitable consequence of easy access to abortion.
Anthony Ozimic, SPUC’s communications manager, commented: “This investigation confirms the reality of eugenics in modern British medicine, in which some innocent human beings are deemed too inconvenient to be allowed to live. Sex-selective abortion is an inevitable consequence of easy access to abortion, a situation to which the pro-abortion lobby has no convincing answer. The government needs to cut its ties to private abortion providers and to abortion rights organisations, as they are complict in sex-selective abortion domestically and internationally.”
