British Pregnancy Advisory Service

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) is a British non-profit organisation whose stated purpose is to "[support] reproductive choice by advocating and providing high quality, affordable services to prevent or end unwanted pregnancies with contraception or by abortion."

Origin

BPAS was founded in 1968 in Birmingham as the Birmingham Pregnancy Advisory Service. On the day that the Abortion Act 1967 came into force, Saturday 27 April 1968, the first patients had their consultations in the front room of the then Chairman, Dr Martin Cole. At that time patients had to travel to London for termination, but a clinic was opened in Birmingham 18 months later.

Activities

In addition to providing abortion services (50% of NHS-funded abortions through 150 agencies), BPAS also provides emergency contraception, vasectomy and sterilisation, and vasectomy reversal services, and is Britain's largest single abortion provider. Government funding (through the Department of Health) as of 2004 was £12 million. BPAS's South London Clinic was one of the first recipients of the Department of Health 'You're Welcome' award in March 2009, for providing high standards of health care to young people.

BPAS stored donor sperm and carried out treatments before the HFEA came into being in 1993. Although it never carried out treatments under the Human Fertiisation and Embryology Act, it held a storage licence until 1997. Its Central London clinic, the Pregnancy Advisory Service (PAS) did hold a treatment licence and carried out treatments between 1994 and 1996 and sold its client list to the London Women's Clinic the following summer. BPAS sold on its remaining sperm samples in 1997.

Ann Furedi, BPAS's current CEO, said in November 2004 that access to abortions performed between 20-24 weeks needs to be improved. She said BPAS carries out 80% of the UK's post-20 week abortions, but due to being unable to meet the demand they often send women seeking such terminations to other countries.

Criticism

In late 2004, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph presented video evidence to the British government (Health Secretary Dr John Reid and Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson) showing BPAS counsellors referring women whose pregnancies were too advanced for legal abortions in Britain (past 24 weeks) to a clinic, Ginemedex, in Barcelona, Spain, which was itself operating outside Spanish law by providing late-term "social" abortions (a non-legal, politically loaded term sometimes used to describe non-medically-necessary abortions).

A report filed by the Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, in September, 2005 was critical of some aspects of BPAS counselling, but concluded that, in the matter of BPAS staff referring (in the broad sense, not the strict medical definition) women with late-term pregnancies to the Ginemedex clinic, BPAS had not broken any laws. The report suggested that, in the cases where late-term pregnant women approached BPAS, their employees were so quick to suggest the Spanish clinic that they were neglecting the women's medical and other needs. The report stated unequivocally that BPAS's ability to provide abortion and reproductive counselling and services (within its mandate) had not in any way been compromised, and that no changes in funding should result. It further stated however, that protocol for late-term abortion counselling was sorely lacking, and that the government and interested agencies must develop said protocol with all possible speed.

External links

• BPAS homepage
• Telegraph article on 'the sting' October, 2004
• The Department of Health report PDF format, September 2005