Marie Stopes Clinics Halt Abortions Over Safety Concerns

Britain's biggest abortion clinic group Marie Stopes has suspended half its scheduled procedures with immediate effect due to concerns raised during an unannounced inspection.  The Care Quality Commission's ‘immediate concerns’ were made public after officials visited the organisation's London headquarters. The issues in question include staff training and competence, concern over the treatment of under age and vulnerable patients and the use of anaesthesia and sedation. All terminations involving the latter have been suspended at 60 clinics across Britain. A statement posted on the clinic's website reads:

"As of today Marie Stopes UK has agreed with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to voluntarily suspend some of its termination of pregnancy services. This is to allow Marie Stopes UK to resolve areas of concern in its training and governance procedures. We are working urgently with the CQC on these areas and intend to regain full assurance within a few days. “Alongside this, our immediate priority is to make sure that women booked into one of our affected services are rebooked swiftly into alternative local services and we are working closely with NHS England to ensure that this happens. "We'd like to reassure people that our other services remain unaffected. Each year 70,000 women are treated within our centres, and our clinical outcomes continue to outperform the national average.”

Marie Stopes clinics provide terminations to approximately 70,000 women per year. If a woman is less than 10 weeks pregnant, the termination can be carried out by taking a pill. It is understood that these appointments will continue as scheduled. The news comes as two Irish women live tweet their journey to Manchester for an abortion. The women, who left Ireland this morning, set up the Twitter account @twowomentravel in an effort to show Taoiseach Enda Kenny what the long journey looks like for at least 14 women who are forced to leave Ireland every day for a termination.