By Hilary White
LONDON, February 13, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A fashionable London Catholic hospital is referring for abortions and distributing abortifacient drugs according to a labour peer who investigated on behalf of the Catholic Church. This week, Lord Brennan reported his findings on an investigation into St John and St Elizabeth Hospital that found the hospitals were referring women for abortions or prescribing the morning-after pill.
Lord Brennan has informed Cormac Murphy O’Connor the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, saying the hospital was in violation of its own ethics code.
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The hospital has defended itself, arguing that, although it was “proud of its Catholic heritage, it was committed to an ecumenical philosophy and was responsible for the care of all.”
Dr Helen Watt, the director of the Linacre Centre, a Catholic bioethics think tank, said she hoped that the Brennan report would help secure “the serious changes needed to keep the hospital to a Catholic ethos.”
“Many take a consumerist view of health care as ‘giving people what they want’. The Church takes a very different view – as, indeed, do those of other faiths who welcome the Church’s insistence on respect for every human being.”
“Women should be referred for advice only to individuals and institutions that will genuinely respect them and their unborn children. They are free to seek other, pro-abortion advice, but should never be aided in doing this by anyone who cares about their welfare.”