ProLife

UK Women Can Now Book Online for Abortion
This material appears courtesy of By Patrick Goodenough, CNS London Bureau Chief, 13 July, 2000

London (CNSNews.com) - A leading British abortion provider has launched an online service for women to book a consultation leading to an abortion, even as pro-life campaigners accuse the provider of deliberately misleading clients, to encourage them to end their pregnancies.

Marie Stopes International spokesperson Franca Tranza said women had been asking about booking abortions over the Internet "for some time." The service became available to women in Britain this week, and it expects to expand to serve women women abroad within several months.

"The idea of being able to read unbiased information about abortion and then make an appointment for a consultation from home, work or an Internet cafe is obviously very appealing."

But is the information "unbiased"?

The pro-life organization Life doesn't think so. Life counselor Victoria Gillick has asked the organization overseeing UK charities for an inquiry into MSI, which she accuses of "medical deception for financial gain."

The Catholic Herald weekly reports that Gillick wrote to the Charities Commission to raise concerns about "flagrantly dishonest information" allegedly being given to women who visit MSI clinics.

She claimed some women reported they were pressured to have abortions.

One woman told Gillick she had phoned MSI to ask the cost to end a 12-week-old pregnancy. A receptionist had told her the price - around $610 - and then told her the fetus was only a "blob of jelly" up to 14 weeks, and she should ignore anyone who told her otherwise. The woman has since decided to have her baby.

"If it is usual for staff at Marie Stopes clinics to mislead and pressure vulnerable young women in this way, and for the doctors to keep the ultrasound scan turned away from them lest they change their minds and walk out with their purse still intact, then surely this is tantamount to medical deception for financial gain," Gillick said.

Without giving women full and proper information, MSI could not claim to have a legally valid consent to end a pregnancy.

MSI spokesperson Tranza said she could not comment on what one staff member is alleged to have said. But she gave the assurance that full counseling is available to women who visit the clinics - if they wish to have it.

"I find it quite ironic that Life should be accusing us of unbiased information when they are an organization fundamentally opposed to abortion and yet still offering crisis pregnancy advice where girls go to them and are completely getting a one-sided story."

She said women who visit Life centers are shown "very, very emotive films" and told things like "Do you think your baby would want you to kill it?"

"If someone has counseling at Marie Stopes they see a fully-trained counselor who is not making their mind up for them ... [and is] essentially there to facilitate the woman to make the best decision for her."

Questions that would be discussed would include: "how does the woman feel about the pregnancy, how do they envisage their life with a child, where do they see their life going - questions that would help the woman make the right decision for her in her circumstances."

Tranza confirmed that ultrasound scans are done routinely before each abortion. Asked whether women were able to see the screen during the scan, she replied: "Women are only shown the scans if they want to see the scans."

Tranza said MSI would be discussing the complaint with the Charities Commission. "We haven't seen them as yet so I can't really comment any more than that."

'Racist'
MSI carries out 35,000 abortions a year, and operates in 30 mostly developing countries worldwide.

It says its mission is "to educate the public about population, growth and control and particularly about family planning and birth control and contraceptives with a view to preventing the poverty, hardship and distress caused by unwanted conception."

It was founded by Scottish-born Marie Stopes, who opened Britain's first "family planning clinic" in London in 1921.

Stopes, who died in 1958, was voted "Woman of the Millennium" in 1999 by the readers of Britain's liberal Guardian newspaper.

But Gillick paints a very different picture of the abortion pioneer.

Writing in the Catholic Herald, Gillick says Stopes' published views were racist and offensive, referring to the "puny and utterly unsatisfactory" children of the poor, and making such observations as: "our race is weakened by an appallingly high percentage of unfit weaklings and diseased individuals."

She was keenly interested in eugenics ("selective breeding").

"In Stopes's view, only those children with a chance of reaching 'strong, beautiful and intelligent maturity' should be conceived."

Stopes was the founder of an organization called the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress. According to Gillick, one of her contemporaries, whom she quotes in her own books, was Dr. Alfred Ploetz, founder of the concept of "racial hygiene," and later associated with Germany's "compulsory castration, sterilization and euthanasia laws" in the 1930s.

'Misleading'
Reacting to MSI's online abortion registration service, another British pro-life group, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, said it was "an insult to the hundreds of women hurt by abortion every day."

"Marie Stopes International's website shows the ease with which unborn babies can be killed in Britain," SPUC national director John Smeaton said in a statement.

He called the website's description of an abortion "outrageously misleading."

"A procedure which dismembers a tiny but completely formed baby by the force of a powerful vacuum is described as follows: 'We usually use gentle suction to remove the contents of your womb through a narrow tube.'

"The overwhelming worldwide evidence of the adverse psychiatric aftermath of abortion is also swept aside with the false claim that abortion has no effect on a woman's general health," Smeaton said.

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