Spain Facility Doing Illegal Late-Term Abortions Got Dutch Referrals Too 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 14, 2007
Barcelona, Spain (LifeNews.com) — A set of abortion businesses in Spain, that have been shut down for allegedly doing illegal late-term abortions as late as eight months into the pregnancy, received referrals from British doctors. New reports indicate they apparently received referrals from physicians in the Netherlands as well.
Last month, local police arrested six abortion facility employees based on the allegations after a pro-life group filed an official complaint.
The complaint came after abortion center officials offered a Denmark journalist a seven-month abortion, beyond the 22-week limit on abortions in Spain.
Meanwhile, a Dutch woman has been freed after spending four weeks in prison on charges that she had an illegal abortion at one of the abortion centers in question. The Netherlands’ law allows abortions up to 24 weeks into pregnancy in rare circumstances and the woman was past that point.
Her attorney, Caspar Brouwers, told the Dutch television program Pauw & Witteman that Dutch doctors did not want to violate the law against late-term abortions there so they referred her to the Spanish abortion centers.
She ultimately had an abortion at the Ginemedex abortion facility, one of four Spanish police closed down.
The news is important because it makes Holland the second nation with doctors sending pregnant women late in pregnancy to the Spain abortion businesses.
British doctors and a British-based abortion business have already come under fire for sending women there for illegal late-term abortions.
Ann Furedi, the head of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service abortion business in England that was telling British women about the late-term abortion centers, defended the policy.
She told The Times that it would be “morally reprehensible” not to refer women to the late-term abortion centers if they wanted an abortion so late in pregnancy.
In December 2005, a British doctor was charged in a case of evading British law restricting late-term abortions by sending a woman to the late-term abortion center.
Saroj Adlakha was accused of arranging the abortion for Shilpa Abrol, who was 31 weeks pregnant at the time. Abrol and Adlakha were charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against a person outside the United Kingdom.
Adlakha admitted she coordinated an abortion for the woman on the advice of British Pregnancy Advisory Service 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.
Approximately eighty percent of the abortions done at the Spanish abortion business were performed on British women, the British press reported.
According to the television report, between 50 and 75 Portuguese and French women a week have late abortions at the facility.
Spain legalized abortion in 1985 up to 22 weeks into pregnancy. Abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy can only be performed if the mother’s physical or mental health is at risk.
