Clinic in Barcelona providing late-term abortions

Madrid, Spain, Oct 30, 2006 / 22:00 pm

A report on Danish television revealed this week that a clinic in Barcelona is profiting from “abortion tourism” and is performing macabre procedures on women who are more than seven months pregnant.  For $5,000 (USD) the clinic will inject poison into the unborn child, who at that stage is viable, thus causing his death in the womb through cardiac arrest.

The EFE news agency reported that a correspondent from the Danish television network DR, carrying a hidden camera, visited the E.M.E.C.E Clinic in Barcelona, which “fraudulently and systematically makes use of the law in Spain that permits abortion at any time during the pregnancy in cases of life or physical or mental health of the mother.”

In Denmark abortion is legal for any reason up to the twelfth week of pregnancy and afterwards only in cases of serious deformation of the fetus.  A Danish journalist who is thirty weeks pregnant contacted the clinic and pretended to be interested in an abortion.

Carrying a hidden camera, she interviewed the director of the clinic, Carlos Morin, who said the clinic sees patients from France, Great Britain, Holland, Germany and even Australia and claimed that the procedure is legal and safe for women.

According to EFE, Morin said, “Digoxin, which is used to treat heart problems, is injected into the heart of the fetus and causes death by cardiac arrest before it is removed from the uterus.”

The undercover journalist told clinic workers she supposedly wanted an abortion because she had just broken up with her boyfriend and not because the baby suffered from any problem.  She was only asked to fill out some forms about her mental and physical health.

“Later, they gave the woman three psychological tests that consist of general questions, arguing that the only way for the abortion to be legal is for supposed physical or psychiatric problems to be determined, even though during the interview the woman acknowledged that her heath was ‘good’,” EFE reported.

The clinic director said the tests were only for “bureaucratic” purposes, and in a later interview he told the woman all the paperwork had been completed and that the abortion would cost $5,000.  When the Danish woman returned to the clinic and revealed her identity, Morin tried to argue that more tests were needed.

The Danish exposé also included an interview with Jose Maria Simon Castellvi of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, who said Spain is suffering from “abortion tourism.”  Thousands of Europeans have traveled to Barcelona to obtain illegal abortions, he said.

The Association of Abortion Victims (AAV) said it has testimonies from numerous women that confirm that the clinic in Barcelona “commits the crime of falsifying documents and faking psychiatric pathologies in order to administer abortions.”

The AAV cites the case of 40 year-old Maria, a Spanish woman from Valencia, who received an abortion at the clinic in 2000, when she was six months pregnant, because “she wanted to have a daughter and she was carrying a son.”

“Carlos Morin saw me and told me to pay and they would do what I wanted, no problem,” Maria explained.  “He said they would inject my child to kill him.  He told me to sign a paper, I don’t remember what it said.”  Maria would later attempt to commit suicide. “Why didn’t they make me understand the madness of my decision?  My child was healthy and they were doctors who were supposed to care for the health of both us,” she said.