Police investigating four abortion clinics in Barcelona used frequently by British women have been horrified to find purpose-built machines attached to the drains that were used to crush foetuses.

The clinics allegedly performed illegal abortions on women into their eighth month of pregnancy. Police have arrested Carlos MorÍn, the Peruvian head of the clinics, his wife and four other colleagues after a lawsuit by a Christian organisation, e-Cristians. Mr MorÍn reportedly has refused to answer police questions.

Because they were so loud, the machines – which fed into public drains – were switched on only during the early hours of the day to avoid drawing attention to the illegal arrangement, police sources said. Officers gathering evidence at the clinics this week have been testing the machines and drains for traces of DNA, which may be matched with that of past clients, according to reports.

Under Spanish law, abortions can be carried out only in cases of rape, if there is a risk to the mother’s physical or mental health or in cases of severe foetal malformation, and then only until the 22nd week of preganancy.

The clinics under investigation – Ginemedex, Barnamedic, EMECE and TCB – advertised throughout Europe and are thought to have had a large number of British women as clients.

Three years ago the publicly funded British Pregnancy Advisory Service was found to be referring women beyond the 24-week legal limit in Britain to Ginemedex, the clinic where the foetus-disposal machine was allegedly found this week.

At the time Ann Furedi, the service’s chief executive, defended its policy, saying that it would be “morally reprehensible” not to help women to get treatment. Yesterday Ms Furedi said that BPAS did not refer British women to the Spanish clinic but continued to give out its number.

“If any of these clinics were to be found to be working [outside] their country’s law, we would cease to inform women about their existence,” she told The Times, adding: “My understanding is that this latest action [against the Spanish clinics] was triggered by a Christian fundamentalist group.”

A public inquiry was begun in 2004 by John Reid, then the Health Minister. However, the Chief Medical Officer decided ultimately to take no action. “Whilst BPAS can be criticised for giving out the number of the Spanish clinic too readily, and not giving appropriate advice to women, on the available evidence BPAS has not broken any law,” he concluded.

News of the latest police findings in Barcelona has shocked Spaniards. The conservative ABC newspaper yesterday described what the police had found as “a set of horrors more usually associated with Nazi extermination camps”. The operation, it said, “has uncovered a entire homocide industry that should shame any developed society”.

Last year a Danish television documentary filmed Mr MorÍn offering an abortion to a woman in her seventh month of pregnancy. He gave the undercover journalist a form stating that she suffered from a mental disorder, dispensing with the need to get a certificate from another two doctors.

“We put a toxin in [the baby’s] heart that causes instant death,” he explained, saying that the procedure would cost €4,000 (£2,860).

Police phone taps have reportedly gathered evidence of abortions being practiced at the clinics in the eighth month of pregnancy.

There has been a steady rise in the number of abortions performed in Spain since it was partially legalised in 1985. About 90,000 are currently performed each year and many experts doubt that they are all legal.

Mirentxu Corcoy, a law professsor at Barcelona University, said recently that 90 per cent of the abortions practised in the northeastern region of Catalonia “were on the outer fringes of legality”.

— The British Government has said that it wants a new set of guidelines for approving late abortions when there is a risk that the child would be seriously handicapped. Opponents of abortion said that because there is no definition of abnormality some abortions have been carried out on trivial medical grounds, such as cleft palates. In reply to a cross-party committee of MPs who rejected calls for the publication of a list of abnormalities, the Government said that it would ask the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists for new guidelines.

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