Call for investigation into Belfast clinic after damning report

Activities at Belfast’s Marie Stopes clinic are “shrouded in darkness” and should be investigated, a leading pro-life campaigner has said in the aftermath of a damning report into the organisation’s English abortion centres.

The report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which followed inspections at clinics in 10 locations across England, as well its call centre and corporate headquarters, found that Marie Stopes, which carries out roughly 70,000 of England Wales’s over 180,000 annual abortions, had put women at risk by failing to train staff properly and neglecting to gain proper consent from patients.

The CQC’s deputy chief inspector of hospitals, Prof. Edward Baker, criticised the organisation’s training, governance arrangements, and safety and safeguarding protocols, expressing concern that patients would not be “protected from avoidable harm at all times”.

Report

In one centre, the report found, doctors had been “bulk-signing” authorisation forms authorising abortions. 

Under Britain’s 1967 Abortion Act, doctors who perform abortions are immune from prosecution if two doctors certify in good faith that it would be better for a woman’s health if an abortion were performed rather the pregnancy be allowed continue to term.

The report showed “loud and clear that women are being deceived and exploited by Marie Stopes International and their unborn babies are routinely destroyed”, according to Bernadette Smyth, director of Precious Life.

“With regard to the Marie Stopes centre in Belfast,” she continued, “no one knows what goes on behind its closed doors. It is shrouded in darkness.”

Observing that when the clinic first opened in 2012, representatives said it would work closely with the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA), Ms Smyth recalled how when Precious Life wrote to the RQIA when the CQC voiced concerns about Marie Stopes in August, the RQIA said it was awaiting the CQC’s report.

Interests

“Now that the CQC’s findings have been released, we are calling on the RQIA to take action,” she said, adding, “in the interests of protecting women and their unborn children, we are calling on the RQIA to ensure that women from Northern Ireland are not being referred to Marie Stopes in England or elsewhere to have abortions. Women deserve better than abortion.”