The British newspaper, the Sun, called it an “Abortion Bombshell.” And so it clearly was–the news that one of Britain’s largest abortion providers paid staff bonuses to encourage women to have abortions!
The “damning report” from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), a kind of medical watchdog, was the latest in a series of rebukes to the powerful Marie Stopes International.
Susannah Keogh explained what the watchdog group found at the Marie Stopes centre in Maidstone, Kent.
Staff told inspectors that their performance was measured against Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] and were concerned that these indicators included ‘Did Not Proceed.’
This meant that if a patient decided not to go through with an abortion, this decision would be linked to the staff member’s performance bonus.
Quoting from the report, “They (staff) felt that this encouraged staff to ensure that patients underwent abortions. Staff were also concerned that the pressurised environment and linking of KPIs to perfomance bonuses meant that there was a culture that worked against patient choice.”
“’It is shocking to hear that, at what is often such a difficult and stressful moment, abortion clinics are taking advantage of pregnant women by seeking to do as many abortions as they can, rather than seeking to give genuine, non-directional counselling and advice,” said MP Fiona Bruce.
The Daily Mail today noted, “The report is more damning than any previous inspection.”
It states: ‘Staff were concerned that ‘Did Not Proceed’, the term used when women decided not to proceed with treatment, was measured as a KPI (key performance indicator) and linked to their performance bonus. They felt that this encouraged staff to ensure that patients underwent procedures.’
Inspectors also uncovered minutes of a meeting in July 2015 which referred to a ‘company-wide focus on DNPs’ – Did Not Proceed women who hadn’t gone ahead with abortions.
The report said women who had decided not to have an abortion – and were less than five and a half weeks pregnant – ‘were being called and offered a later appointment’.
The Daily Mail’s Sophie Borland reported how the abortion clinic worked to isolate the women and girls.
Parents, partners or friends of women thinking about having an abortion were ‘seen as an inconvenience’ and ‘their presence strongly discouraged’, the report said.
Inspectors were also worried that girls below the age of 16 were agreeing to have abortions without being made fully aware of the risks and consequences.
“’This exposes the true income-seeking nature of the abortion industry,” said Clara Campbell, from the pro-life organization, Life. “A conveyer-belt culture has pervaded the industry for many years and Marie Stopes International is a good example of this.” She added, “The abortion industry likes to parrot a narrative of looking after the interests of women but when it ends up placing their health and safety at risk in the pursuit of money, it becomes incumbent on the Government to act to protect women.”
As NRL News Today reported last December, Marie Stopes, which performs about 70% of all abortions across England, had suspended a number of abortion services because of safety concerns discovered by a surprise inspection by the Care Quality Commission. The concerns “included badly trained staff, poor infection control checks and medics failing to get the correct consent,” according to Laura Donnelly, Health Editor for the Telegraph.
In September the Care Quality Commission was given new powers under regulations laid down in Parliament to identify “rogue” abortion and cosmetic surgery clinics.
And that is just a small sample.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
