Balearic pay-before-op abortion plan sparks row

A volley of mutual accusations has followed news that the Balearic Islands government, run by the center-right Popular Party, is forcing women seeking an abortion to pay for the procedure up front and later request a refund.

Juan José Bestard, director of regional health services, has suggested that the Balearic government was using public money to pay for abortions at accredited private clinics, thus bypassing the public system.

This situation "was not entirely legal," argued Bestard, adding that public authorities were paying these clinics for the procedures without receiving so much as an ultrasound to check the embryo's gestational age.

Abortion clinics contend that they have always turned in whatever information was requested of them, and that invoices include a code referencing the patient's clinical history. "Let them come and carry out inspections - everything is on the level here," said a spokesman for Centro Médico Aragón, one of the accredited abortion clinics.

"What's not legal is to charge women for the abortion in advance," said José Martínez Olmos, the health secretary general with the previous Socialist administration. "Of course they can go straight to the clinics - that's precisely one of the legal safeguards to guarantee their privacy."

Before the new abortion law went into effect in 2010, allowing pregnancy terminations on request in the first trimester, the public health system was paying clinics for around 20 percent of all such procedures; after the law, that figure rose to between 60 and 70 percent.