U.K. Doctors Want Abortion Review

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32031, 4 July 1969, Page 11

U.K. Doctors Want Abortion Review

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright; LONDON, July 3. Britain’s doctors, concerned about increasing abortions and standards in some private clinics, have demanded an urgent review of the country’s new abortion laws.

The doctors voted overwhelmingly yesterday for a motion urging the British Medical Association, their professional body, to carry out a major inquiry. There was only one dissenting vote.

And Dr Ronald Gibson, a B.M.A. official, told delegates at the association’s annual conference at Aberdeen, Scotland, that an M.P. was going to try to introduce major changes in the law in Parliament.

Dr Gibson, who is chairman of the B.M.A. Council, said that a Conservative member of Parliament, Mr Norman St John Stevas, would move an amendment in Parliament

: which would aim to make it ; necessary for abortions to be carried out by, or under the supervision of, a gynaecologist or a doctor of equal status. Taxi drivers at Heatbrow airport, London, are collecting £5 for every woman they deliver to abortion clinics. “But we don’t get a commission if the woman has an appointment,” one of the airport cabbies disclosed to reporters last night. “So What we do is say that the clinic they want has been closed or burnt down, and bring them to another clinic where we get a commission.

“They all have a bit of paper with the name of a doctor or clinic so when we see them we put them gently into the cab and drive them from the airport to one of the London clinics," the taxi-driver told the “Daily Express” and “Guardian” newspapers. “The women are mainly German or Swiss,” he said. Clinics have sprung up all over London since last year when Britain’s abortion laws were relaxed. A Danish women’s rights group. Individual and Society, has accused the drivers of being in the pay of the clinics.

The group said that it had sent 150 Danish' women to Britain for abortions in the last two weeks under an agreement with an unnamed London clinic. They paid £B5 for the abortions.

According to official figures 881 women came to Britain for abortions between March and May this year—an average of 74 a week.