Doctor faces jail for illegal abortions in Barcelona

THE Public Prosecutors’ office is seeking 309 years in prison for Peruvian doctor Carlos Morin, who allegedly carried out more than 100 illegal abortions in Barcelona.

His wife and business partner, Maria Luisa Duran, is facing 204 years, and both are also charged with falsifying documents and illicit association. The illegal abortions were apparently carried out at his Barcelona clinics at different times before 2007.

The investigation began in 2007 following a television report on the clinic broadcast in Denmark. Some of the women who underwent terminations were allegedly more than seven-and-a-half-months pregnant.

Morin and his team justified the procedure at more than 22 weeks under Spain’s former abortion law, dating from 1983, which allowed termination if the mother’s health was at serious risk.

Patients should have undergone psychiatric assessment in such cases, but it appears that this rarely happened and that two psychiatrists, who are amongst the total of 11 people charged in the case, signed off reports without visiting the women.

Morin has already admitted at an earlier stage of the case that abortions were performed on girls as young as 13, according to the prosecutor, with “on limitations” and “with the sole intent of earning money”.

Patients came to the Ginemedex, TCB and CBM clinics from all over Spain and the rest of the world. A judge already relieved them of all charges. Many of the 167 women had to testify to the Guardia Civil and were initially charged.

By Jennifer Leighfield