British cardinal's spokesman quits amid abortion reports.

THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE head of the English and Welsh church hierarchy stepped down in July amid reports he pressured one girlfriend into having an abortion and broke up with another while she was pregnant.

As a close adviser of Westminster archbishop Cormac Murphy O'Connor, Austen Ivereigh was "credited with being the architect of the cardinal's drive to demand tougher laws to curb abortion," according to the Sunday Times. "When I represent the church's teaching on abortion," Ivereigh said as he resigned, "I do so not just with sincerity but from experience."

The ex-spokesman, a former deputy editor of the Tablet Catholic magazine, said he planned legal action over the reports on his past. The scandal led bishops to protest to Murphy O'Connor and Catholic Herald reporters to boycott a cocktail party held by the archdiocese.

One ex-girlfriend said she miscarried twin fetuses in 2005 after Ivereigh got her pregnant and abandoned her; the other said Ivereigh "maneuvered" her into having an abortion in 1989--a date he stresses was before he became a practicing Catholic--and paid half the cost of the procedure. "He made it clear that he would not support me and would play no part in the child's upbringing," she told the Daily Mail. "I was devastated. He maneuvered me into a position where I felt I had no choice but to have a termination.... He certainly seemed very relieved that I'd had the abortion. He dumped me a week later and started going out with a girl who lived above me."