By Dave Andrusko
The abortion industry is continuing an orchestrated attack on Andrew Lansley, the British health secretary, who ordered unannounced inspections of more than 300 abortion clinics in England last month.
Abortionists do not have to see a woman seeking an abortion in person, but they must certify that they are aware of her circumstances and why she wants to go ahead with the abortion. The inspectionsfollowed an undercover investigation by the London Telegraph revealing that doctors at many British abortion clinics were routinely falsifying their paperwork. The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, was outraged and vowed to crack down on clinics which were operating outside the law.
Inspections undertaken by the Care Quality Commission discovered that as many as a fifth of clinics were pre-signing consent forms for the abortionists. This came just weeks after another newspaper investigation that found that some abortionists were routinely approving illegal sex-selective abortions.
As is their habit, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes, in coordination with sympathetic newspaper, began trotting out the line that abortion is becoming “politicized” and that they were the subject of political “witch hunts.” That effort was aided when a letter to the Department of Health from Dame Jo Williams, chair of the Care Quality Commission, was leaked.
In the letter Dame Williams wrote to officials saying the “fulfilment of [the health secretary’s] request has clearly impacted on planned regulatory activity by the CQC.” According to the BBC, “Williams said that including planning and management time, 1,100 days of the CQC’s time had been absorbed by the request.” She also asserted that the visits, paperwork and anticipated enforcement would also have a “considerable impact on our capacity to deliver our annual targets.”
This, in turn,was used by a pro-abortion member of Parliament from another party to claim that “Mr. Lansley was chasing headlines rather than following due process and indeed compromised the independence of the regulator.”
But, the BBC reported, “Sources close to Lansley said that the health secretary had been ’happy’ to give the regulator extra resources to do the task if needed, ‘but they did not ask for them at any point. They never raised this impact with him when he discussed it with their chair at the time.’”
In addition, according to the BBC “Last night in a statement, a Department of Health spokesman said the programme of inspections had been agreed with the regulatorand it was up to the CQC to ‘prioritise its inspections … so that no patients were placed at risk.’.
“’The CQC’s statutory duty is to uphold the law. The CQC was one of the organisations who warned us of this issue at the time, and agreed with us that a programme of inspections should take place as a proportionate response to the serious allegations being made,’ the spokesman said”
It is probably no coincidence that the CQC letter was leaked. Members of Parliament have raised “serious concerns about the commission’s governance, leadership and culture,” according to the BBC, and in February the CQC’s chief executive, Cynthia Bower, announced that she would step down later this year after weeks of criticism.
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