British Police Delay Investigation Details on Illegal Eighth-Month Abortions 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 7, 2005
London, England (LifeNews.com) — British police are delaying the release of details in an investigation of a taxpayer funded abortion business that has admitted to arranging trips to Spain for women having illegal late-term abortions.
Last November, a British doctor admitted to arranging for the abortion of a woman who was more than 30 weeks pregnant. News of other illegal abortions prompted the British government to investigate and pro-life groups to cry foul.
Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, was going to release his report this month of his investigation of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. However, British police want the report delayed to not prejudice its own investigations.
The West Midlands police force has asked Donaldson to hold off because it is looking at possible criminal charges in the case against Birmingham doctor Saroj Adlakha and BPAS officials.
Adlakha admitted she coordinated an abortion for an 18 year-old woman in Barcelona, Spain on the advise of BPAS officials.
She told undercover journalists for the London Telegraph newspaper that she would help arrange a similar abortion for a woman who is 29 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby. Adlakha also said she would provide a pre-abortion exam and provide followup care after the abortion.
In secretly taped video footage recorded by the London newspaper, Adlakha is shown lying to a hospital over the telephone, claiming to have a patient "in severe pain" in order to obtain information needed from the British government to send the woman to Spain.
The Telegraph also reports that very late term abortions, as much as 32 weeks, are being performed undercover.
John Reid, the British Health Secretary, ordered Donaldson to look into the situation.
The investigation comes after another sting operation conducted by the Telegraph showing that BPAS, which receives $12 billion British pounds annually from the federal government, advised women to have illegal abortions at the Spanish abortion facility. Such abortions are prohibited after 24 weeks into the pregnancy.
Staff at the British office where Adlakha works confessed to the Telegraph that they manipulate paperwork to make the abortions appear legal.
Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, said last month that the abortion business was not breaking the law.
According to the Birmingham Post newspaper, Furedi said BPAS was "simply providing women with international contacts to clinics."
Pro-life groups in the U.K. want BPAS to be completely investigated.
Paul Tully of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said the BPAS situation "demonstrates the attitude of abortion providers to the law — illegal late abortions are being done on purely social grounds."
Approximately eighty percent of the abortions done at the Spanish abortion business are performed on British women.
