Jail for ‘mastermind’ behind late abortions clinic

carried out before 24 weeks of pregnancy. Under Spanish law at the time, the limit was 22 weeks.

The investigation discovered the BPAS, the leading provider of abortions in the UK, as a matter of “policy” was referring pregnant women to the Spanish clinic if they were beyond the UK’s 24-week legal cut-off. Ginemedex staff were caught on film and audio offering to abort the healthy 26-weekold foetus of an undercover reporter.

The clinic charged women on a sliding scale depending on the stage of pregnancy. Women at 24 weeks were charged €2,780 (£2,260), rising by about €200 a week. Women at 26 weeks were charged €3,200.

A judge investigating Morín had accused the doctor of enjoying “enormous income levels” and a “high standard of living”.

Morín lived in Sant Cugat del Vallés, a village outside Barcelona, in a villa next to a golf course. The house had a large garden, pool and Jacuzzi, and Morín is said to have driven luxury cars including a Ferrari. In 2005, accounts showed the clinic’s annual turnover was about £1 million.

Judge José Antonio Rodríguez ruled Morín was the “sole true director and mastermind behind all of the activity that took place in his clinics”, therefore acquitting the other gynaecologists who carried out many of the abortions.

They were manipulated by Morín, who ensured that the paperwork appeared to be in order before each abortion took place, said the judge. very easy to get distracted around the hype and the demands for your attention. The parties, you know, the player parties.

“The things you suddenly get asked to because you are in the limelight, and these can be tiring and distracting.

“I think if she wants to do well she is going to be very focused and keep everything very calm around her.”

Yesterday Konta was quick to dismiss those fears.

“I play tennis because I love it. There are certain things that come along with that, but if the athlete loves the sport they will dedicate themselves to it as best they can,” she said.

“I’m here to play my tennis and really enjoy what I do.”

Konta, who reached the semi-finals of last week’s Eastbourne tournament – before losing in three sets to the Czech Karolina Pliskova – says she is ready to meet the challenge of Wimbledon’s famous grass courts.

“I think it’s a given with the grass that you are going to slip and tumble here and there,” she said.

“You get good at falling and try to make it look as graceful as possible.

“I think the main thing is not to get too nervous about it or too scared.”

Above all the rising star, who trains in Gijón, northern Spain after the Lawn Tennis Association cut her funding last year, says she wants to “give the crowd some good matches”.

She said: “For me this will be a new thing. I’m looking forward to it.”

Born to Hungarian parents in Sydney, Australia, Konta moved to the UK in 2005.

She used to represent Australia, but switched her sporting allegiance when she became a British citizen in May 2012.

Not that she’ll be sharing her views on migration, nationality and Britain’s EU vote anytime soon.

“My opinions are best discussed around the dinner table,” she said.

Or perhaps in the locker room. An undercover picture of a Ginemedex clinic doctor and nurses, above; Carlos Morín under arrest, right. He has now been sentenced to 18 months in prison

Morín, a gynaecologist originally from Peru, was found guilty of involvement in carrying out 11 counts of illegal abortion in 2007. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail, the same term handed down to Pascual Javier Ramón, a psychiatrist at the clinic.

The court was told that psychiatric reports were “false or simulated”. Reports of a raid on the clinic as long ago as 2007 claimed machines “to grind foetuses” were found hidden at the clinic and at another run by Morín. The machines were connected to drains.

The legal action was brought jointly by the public prosecutor and a private organisation, E-Cristians, a Catholic association near Barcelona, which says it was appalled after reading the

investigation. Josep Miró, E-Cristians’ president, said: “We felt that this was a scandalous situation. Morín got rich on the basis of practising this kind of abortion, because with normal legal procedures people don’t make so much money. It is the first time there has been a conviction in Spain for illegal abortion.”

Morín was initially acquitted in 2013 and at the time he insisted he was the victim of a witch hunt. “Falsities were dressed up like truths. I was a scapegoat,” he said at the time. for what could go wrong and 15 ways of solving the problem. But then if I didn’t I’d be worried that I was becoming complacent.”

Tomorrow morning, he will wake at 6am and call his overnight team to check whether there have been any mishaps. Then he’ll check the weather forecast to see how soon the court covers can be taken off before defending champion Novak Djokovic steps out to meet British wildcard James Ward in the first match.

Each morning, the 19 championship courts are cut and re-marked, and a series of tests are carried out to determine hardness and how much watering is needed in the evening – enough to replenish the surface, but dry enough for play the next day.

“Our work is going to be broadcast to millions around the world and we want it to be perfect,” Mr Stubley said. “Over many, many years, Wimbledon has grown into something so traditional and so iconic and it has not sold-out commercially. The colour of the seats and the net posts is the same as it ever was, the logos are the same, the players’ outfits are still white.

“The only thing that’s changed in 50 years is that they play in shorts and skirts instead of long trousers and dresses. Fred Perry would recognise it as essentially the same tournament that he played in.”

But right now that’s scant comfort for Mr Stubley and his team of six fulltime gardeners. Only when the last ball is played, and the men’s singles final is over, will they relax. “That’s when I breathe out,” he said, before going off to check on his lawns, one more time.

But a retrial was ordered on appeal over concerns that crucial evidence supplied by one of the reporters and a Danish film crew, which followed up with its own clandestine investigation, had been wrongly ruled inadmissible. The guilty verdicts were returned earlier this month.

The BPAS was insistent at the time it had broken no laws in referring British women to the clinic for late abortions.

Ann Furedi, BPAS chief executive, said at the time: “There is nothing we are doing that is unlawful. We are simply providing women with international contacts to clinics that can provide them with abortion services.

“We are informing women who come to us that there are circumstances in which we can’t lawfully provide them with an abortion and provide them with information that they can receive treatment in other countries.”

The BPAS says on its website it “takes care” of more than 65,000 women a year and “nearly all … have their care paid for by the NHS”.

Josephine Quintavalle, a founder member of the ProLife Alliance who was highly critical of the arrangement when it was exposed in 2004, said: “As the abortion lobby in our country continues its relentless campaign for decriminalisation, it is encouraging to see the tenacity of the Spanish pro-life movement assisted by other European pro-life groups, who have at last been rewarded with a definitive conviction against Dr Carlos Morín for the illegal killing of late-term unborn children.”