ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 6, 1996 TAG: 9608060085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LONDON
SOURCE: The New York Times
NOTE: Below
A new surge of outrage swept Britain on Monday after a woman who is 16 weeks pregnant and her gynecologist agreed to abort one of two healthy twin fetuses because she says she is too poor to raise twins.
Experts said the abortion would be the first known case in Britain in which a healthy fetus in a naturally conceived multiple pregnancy was aborted. Such a procedure in a multiple pregnancy, known as selective termination, is not unusual when a fetus is discovered to be unhealthy or abnormal.
The woman in this case was not identified, but it is known that she is a 28-year-old single mother who already has one child. No other details about her were disclosed.
There was an outcry from anti-abortion groups last week when the government ordered the destruction of 3,000 unclaimed human embryos in fertility clinics in keeping with a law stipulating that frozen embryos cannot be kept for more than five years without specific requests from the parents.
Doctors who agreed to carry out the abortion and others who supported it asserted that the decision was ``no different from any other abortion,'' in the words of Dr. Vivienne Nathanson, the head of the board of ethics at the British Medical Association.
But anti-abortion groups here and in Italy have offered money to the woman to give birth to both twins and give one up for adoption.
The decision was first reported over the weekend by The Sunday Express in a Page One interview with the woman's gynecologist, Dr. Phillip Bennett of Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London. He said the abortion of one fetus was the solution he had proposed to the woman when she told him she could not continue the pregnancy if it meant having two children.
After the report appeared, other British dailies and television gave the story prominent coverage. A wide range of commentators expressed revulsion, with some calling the decision ``uncivilized,'' ``horrific,'' and ``abhorrent.''
A spokeswoman at Queen Charlotte's Hospital said Bennett had not been in the hospital Monday and there would be no comment on the case, which she called ``a private matter between the doctor and his patient.''
The spokeswoman, Nuala O'Brian, declined to say whether the abortion had been carried out, but other knowledgeable people said it had not.
Bennett told The Sunday Express that he had performed 3,000 abortions in the last 10 years and as many deliveries. Having suggested that he knew the sex of the babies, he said: ``Killing one healthy twin sounds unethical, but my colleagues and I concluded this week that it would be better to terminate one pregnancy as soon as possible and leave one alive than to lose two babies.''
The doctor faced a deluge of requests for interviews Monday but was not available for further comment.
Ms. O'Brian would not say whether the woman had been informed of offers of financial aid to carry the pregnancy to term, saying such information would have to be communicated by the doctor to his patient.
The technique of abortion in this case would involve piercing the selected fetus with a needle, Bennett said in the interview with The Sunday Express. That fetus is then carried for the full term of the pregnancy, ``although it shrivels and mummifies'' in the womb, Bennett said.
Among the unanswered questions in the case are how the doctor selects the fetus to be aborted and whether the woman is told the sex of that fetus.
British law permits the termination of a pregnancy up to the 24th week. The law allows wide latitude on the reason for terminating a pregnancy, considering that a woman's request motivated by a psychological rejection of childbearing is acceptable ground for abortion.
After 24 weeks, the law permits an abortion if there is a physical abnormality.
``Although technically it meets the criterion under which abortion is legal in this country, it is so close to abortion on demand,'' Harry Coen, acting editor of The Catholic Herald newspaper, said in an interview. ``At this stage, in this case particularly, it sounds to me like selective murder. I mean, we know they have aborted healthy babies before, but to leave one and kill the other is abhorrent.''
Some anti-abortion activists and charity groups have offered money and adoption as incentives to the woman to give birth to both twins.
Life, a British national charity with 35,000 dues-paying members and 135 offices around the country, said it was deluged with offers of help and could immediately offer the woman upward of $16,000 from donors who had called Monday. An Italian anti-abortion group said it would offer monthly stipends and adopt one of the babies after birth.
``A lot of people who have been taking things for granted and leaving such matters to the state are suddenly shocked about it and beginning to question the ethical and spiritual void that creates such dreadful developments,'' said Nuala Scarisbrick, a trustee of the group, which was founded in 1970.
``We are not trying to bribe the woman, just save the twins,'' Scarisbrick said in a telephone interview. ``We have made the offer to Bennett but have received no response.''
The Roman Catholic Church said the case of selective abortion might again set off a national debate over the whole issue of terminating pregnancies.
``What it seems to have done is brought to the public a short, sharp shock,'' said Nicholas Coote, assistant secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales.
``In this country, basically what happens is if you go to a doctor and say, `I don't want to take this pregnancy to term because I can't cope,' the doctor can make the decision to terminate it, even if it is a perfectly healthy fetus,'' Coote said. ``Until now it was easy to look away, but this case has brought the full implications of such an act to people's attention.''
LENGTH: Long : 104 linesby CNB