Abortion girls sent to pro-life ‘fanatics’

VULNERABLE women suffering emotional trauma after an abortion have been referred by the NHS to an extremist pro-life group where they are fed the lie that termination can cause breast cancer.

Patients are left distraught by the devastating claim made by advisers at the Good Counsel Network (GCN) – but which is dismissed by medical experts as untrue and ‘damaging’.

Yet one of Britain’s biggest NHS mental health trusts, South West London and St George’s, has been recommending patients to the London-based groups via leaflets and its website. They refer women to ‘pregnancy crisis centres’, where a mixture of lies and half-truths is peddled, aimed at making them change their mind about abortion.

An undercover investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches this week will reveal so-called ‘pavement counsellors’ accosting women outside clinics with lifesize plastic foetuses.

It will show women whose lives could be at risk if they continue the pregnancy being told that their doctors ‘could be wrong’, while patients considering abortion are handed a long list of possible physical and psychological complications.

Clare McCullough, founder of GCN, told a reporter posing as a mother-to-be that more than 50 studies showed an increased risk of breast cancer after an abortion – but medical experts say this is simply not true.

Consultant gynaecologist Dr Kate Guthrie said: ‘It’s very damaging, because if you’re given incorrect information, you are making a choice based on error, not on truth.’