London, England (LifeNews.com) -- A new report indicates the British government, through its national health care system, paid a suspended physician hundreds of thousands of dollars after she evading British law restricting late-term abortions. Saroj Adlakha was accused of arranging the abortion for Shilpa Abrol, who was 31 weeks pregnant at the time.

Adlakha was charged in December 2005 of evading British law restricting late-term abortions by sending Abrol, her teenager daughter, to a late-term abortion center in Spain.

The physician admitted she coordinated an abortion for Abrol in Barcelona, Spain on the advice of British Pregnancy Advisory Service officials. Yet, she was never convicted because the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges after not being able to prove they were valid.

Adlakha, of Shilpa Medical Centre, in Kings Heath, was eventually suspended from the medical register by the General Medical Council and hasn't been allowed to practice medicine for four years.

But that didn't stop the NHS, through the South Birmingham Primary Care Trust, from paying her £600,000 while she was suspended.

The Birmingham News reports that it is one of the highest amounts paid to a suspended physician in British history.

The trust told the newspaper that the payments included paying for two doctors to care for Adlakha's patients.

Adlakha will remain under suspension, the News indicates, until August when the GMC will hold another hearing on its charges that she abused her position, failed to be trustworthy, and failed to provide a patient with sufficient information about medical risks.

The case received attention after Adlakha told undercover journalists for the London Telegraph newspaper that she would help arrange a similar abortion for a woman who was 29 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby.
Adlakha also said she would provide a pre-abortion exam and provide followup care after the abortion.

In secretly taped video footage recorded by the London newspaper, Adlakha is shown lying to a hospital over the telephone, claiming to have a patient "in severe pain" in order to obtain information needed from the British government to send the woman to Spain.

The investigation came after another sting operation conducted by the Telegraph showing that BPAS, which receives $12 billion annually from the British government, advised women to have illegal abortions at the Spanish abortion facility. Such abortions are prohibited after 24 weeks into the pregnancy in England.

Staff at the British office where Adlakha worked confessed to the Telegraph that they manipulated paperwork to make the abortions appear legal.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, said the abortion business was not breaking the law.

According to the Birmingham Post newspaper, Furedi said BPAS was "simply providing women with international contacts to clinics."

Pro-life groups in the U.K. wanted BPAS to be completely investigated, though that has not happened.

Paul Tully of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said at the time that the BPAS situation "demonstrates the attitude of abortion providers to the law -- illegal late abortions are being done on purely social grounds."

Approximately eighty percent of the abortions done at the Spanish abortion business are performed on British women.

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