BRITAIN SHOCKED BY ABORTION OF TWIN.

Byline: Fawn Vrazo The Philadelphia Inquirer 

She was 28, poor, single and pregnant - not with one unborn baby but two. One was all she could cope with, she told her doctor, and he agreed to abort one of the healthy twin fetuses with a saline injection into its heart so that the other one could live.

This was a better outcome, the doctor felt, than the other alternative she considered, which was having both of the fetuses killed.

It was a dramatic, true story - a modern-day King Solomon's tale that has gripped the British public for days.

Tuesday, it was over. Under threat of a lawsuit and increasingly embroiled in controversy, the unidentified woman's hospital, Queen Charlotte & Chelsea in west London, announced in a terse statement that the abortion had already taken place.

The disclosure came even as anti-abortion groups and individuals here and abroad were mounting a last-ditch effort to encourage the woman to give birth to both twins. By Tuesday night, about $70,000 had been offered as donations by individuals hoping the money would change her mind.

``45,000-POUND OFFER TO SAVE TWIN,'' said the screaming headline in yesterday's Daily Mail - and by then everyone in Britain knew who that twin was.

According to some reports, the hospital was refusing to tell the pregnant woman about the cash offers. Britain's major anti-abortion group, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, filed a lawsuit and won a temporary injunction against the abortion until the hospital could explain its position.

Apparently wishing to avoid an embarrassing court hearing, the hospital's public relations company issued a brief statement Tuesday night saying only that the woman ``is happy for us to confirm only that the operation has taken place.''

The debate over the twin abortion fell along more traditional lines - with anti-abortion groups arguing against it and reproductive rights leaders saying that the woman was making a reasonable decision well within the bounds of Britain's abortion law.

Under that law, a woman is granted the right to have an abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy either if her fetus is deformed or if the pregnancy threatens her physical and mental health. Two doctors must approve the abortion before it can be done.

Although the twin abortion apparently marked the first time in Britain that one of two healthy fetuses has been aborted for nonmedical reasons, ``There is no real difference between this and a mother who has an abortion, denying her other children a sibling,'' said Ann Furedi of the abortion rights group Birth Control Trust, writing in the Guardian.

The story broke Sunday after the unidentified woman's doctor, surgeon Philip Bennett, was profiled in an interview in the tabloid Sunday Express. The story said that the doctor ``faces a dilemma'' because a patient in ``straitened circumstances,'' called Miss B, is ``16 weeks pregnant, is carrying healthy twins and cannot abide the prospect of having two children. She says she couldn't cope.''

By Tuesday, the story was everywhere. TV shows were filled with interviews with multiple-birth experts as well as the mothers of twins, one of whom told Sky News: ``It's very hard, and very joyous.'' But no journalists seriously questioned that the abortion was still pending until the British Broadcasting Corporation began reporting late Tuesday that it may have already occurred - as long ago as last March.

There was no immediate comment from Bennett. It was unclear whether he had misled the original reporter, or whether the media had made a mistake and then been carried away with a provocative story. The fate of the other fetus was also unknown.

Tuesday night, anti-abortion groups could only issue solemn statements and express concern for the second twin. ``We're concerned,'' said Brendan Gerard of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, ``because the surviving brother or sister will grow up with the knowledge he or she was allowed to live while the other one died.''