Debate Continues To Rage After One Twin Was Aborted

A debate on the abortion of a healthy twin by a financially-strapped mother moved out of the courtroom Wednesday, but continued to rage among doctors, legislators, the clergy and ordinary Britons.

An anti-abortion group withdrew an injunction it had obtained against the abortion after learning that it had already taken place.

“The subject matter has evaporated,” High Court Judge Sir Michael Turner said Wednesday in withdrawing an injunction obtained by the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child to prevent the abortion.

But the repercussions were far from over: The obstetrician who misled the media by indicating the woman had not yet undergone the procedure faced an inquiry into his actions.

The story in a front-page Sunday Express story about the 28-year-old single mother’s plight brought in $77,000 in cash offers for the woman to change her mind.

In it, her obstetrician, Phillip Bennett, was quoted as saying the woman already had one child and was seeking to abort one of her twins because she could not afford two more children.

But within hours of a court hearing to prevent the abortion, Hammersmith Hospitals Trust revealed it had already been performed at Queen Charlotte Hospital.

The Sun newspaper spoke to Bennett, who has dodged reporters since the initial report, and quoted him Wednesday as saying the abortion was performed a month ago.

“I have been unable to clear this up sooner because I required the patient’s permission to reveal when the operation took place,” Bennett was quoted as saying.

Hammersmith Hospitals Trust said in a statement Wednesday that it was initiating a review of Bennett’s actions by senior hospital managers.

“It’s completely new to talk about aborting a twin in the womb, particularly by the particular technique of piercing the heart with a needle,” said Catherine Francoise, a spokeswoman for the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child.

Sir David Steel, a lawmaker who was instrumental in passing Britain’s 1967 Abortion Act, urged a “proper anxious debate about medical ethics,” although he said there was no need to reconsider the law.

But the second-ranking leader of the Church of England, Archbishop of York John Habgood, disagreed, calling the abortion of a healthy twin “morally indefensible, and contrary to the clear intentions of the Abortion Act.”

The case reflects a “culture of death,” wrote theologian Gino Concetti in the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

“Behind her and with her is a battle-hardened, obliging, permissive front: that which holds it is legal and opportune to kill a child already conceived and on the way to birth only because it represents - it is thought - a burden for a mother who is alone,” Concetti wrote.

The case broke just one week after a controversy over the destruction of about 3,300 unclaimed frozen embryos from fertility clinics. The embryos were destroyed under a law limiting their storage to five years.