FROM NOVEMBER 15 the Medway district health authority in Kent has slashed by two-thirds its provision of NHS-funded It has also removed 'poverty' and severe social deprivation from its criteria for free abortions.
Financial chaos and starvation of resources, resulting from the new contract system of NHS funding. , has been blamed for the cuts. The district's budget of 78 million is reported to be overspent by 432,000 Medway is not one of the notorious anti-abortion health authorities. The proportion of NHS-funded abortions was only 8 percent below the national average of 48 per cent last year - an mcmore on the 1989 figure. But with these savage cutsthis will droptobetween 12 The official line is that there cuts are only intended to last until the end of the financial year, and that NHS abortion pratision will be restored after But with no real massive injection of resources forsceable in the short term, there is likely to be substantial pressure on the authority to continue its objectively anti-abortion stance.
As more and more health authorities are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, slashing of abortion facilities Weil te open to the lag aly male grey-suited bureaucrats who control health authority budgets. The Medway example could be followed by many Socialists should be organis ing now to try and prevent this from happening. The warnings given from the National Abortion Campaign about the effects of the process of NHS privatisa. tion have now certainly begun to ring true.
NAC can be contacted at Wesley House. Wild London, WC2B SAU. Tel: 071 405 4801.