UK Doctors Refuse to Perform Abortions

From the Daily Mail:

NHS doctors are refusing to carry out late abortions, forcing hospitals to contract them out to private clinics and charities.

Growing moral objections mean three-quarters of the 7,000 terminations performed after 17 weeks of pregnancy each year are outside the Health Service.

The revelation comes as MPs prepare to vote on maintaining the 24-week upper limit for "social" abortions in the biggest Parliamentary battle on the issue for two decades.

I have to agree with this comment from the folks at Ida Express:

MPs are voting tomorrow to cut down the 24 week limit to 13, 16, 18, 20 or 22 weeks. But as they have not decided yet, why are women already being turned away from their local practitioners?


It seems ethical and religious convictions have motivated the NHS to abandon some of their patients, but that in itself crosses another ethical line. All Britains are supposed to be covered by this National Health System 100 %! Religious belief should not come into it at all, and I am shocked that it has. To be turned away by your own local hospital and be told that you now have to pay hundreds of pounds for an abortion, is forcing one person's beliefs on another--that is wrong and if I am correct--illegal!

If the people of the UK prefer an American-style system in which people literally bankrupt themselves paying their medical bills, fine. But it's not fair to say that everyone gets their health care paid for, except pregnant women.