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Woman who has banned abortions on Harley Street
Last updated at 08:52am on 13.02.07
Lady Howard de Walden: a devout Roman Catholic
The Roman Catholic owners of Harley Street have banned abortion clinics from opening on their premises.
They have added 'lifestyle abortions' to a list of procedures that their tenants are forbidden to carry out.
The Howard de Walden Estate, which owns the freehold to a swathe of the Marylebone district in London, denies the decision has been taken for moral reasons.
It says the list, which also includes human cloning and euthanasia, is designed to give Harley Street a makeover after years in which it had become associated with 'lifestyle or cosmetic medicine'.
However the estate's owner 71-year-old Mary Hazel Czernin, 10th Baroness Howard de Walden, is a Catholic. She took the reins of the estate in 2004 after a title wrangle following the death of her Church of England father.
More than 3,000 practitioners work in the Harley Street district and there are more than one million square feet of medical clinics including a number of famous private hospitals.
Among them are the London Clinic, the
Harley Street Clinic, and the King Edward VII. None is an abortion clinic.
The estate, which covers almost 100 acres of Marylebone, is owned by descendents of Edward Harley, the man who laid out the area at the start of the 18th century.
Chief executive Toby Shannon insisted the decision was only taken to ensure Harley Street focused on areas such as cancer and heart disease.
He said: "Abortion is a very emotive subject, but we feel that dealing with cancer is more important.
"We don't have any direct abortion clinics on the estate but this will prevent anyone trying to set up one."
He added: "There is an awful lot of leading-edge medicine going on and what we are doing is trying to focus as far as possible on that end of the spectrum.
"We have a limited number of clinics that we own and we want to make sure that as far as possible these people are practising necessary medicine rather than lifestyle or cosmetic medicine.
"We want to concentrate on what we believe is most appropriate for the area: what we feel is more lifestyle, we are trying to resist."
The Howard de Walden Estate is working with the London Clinic to build a cancer centre, which it hopes will become a world leader once it opens in 2009.
But Simon Baynham, managing director of the estate, told the magazine Estates Gazette that Harley Street had become far too associated with cosmetic surgery and other 'lifestyle' treatments.
He said the new rules would help restore the reputation of the area.
He said: "There are still doctors doing certain procedures that we'd rather were not here. So we are steering a course that will restrict them.
"These doctors have old leases and the policy is new. It'll take time to work such tenants out."
He added: "We want the reputation of Harley Street to be about serious rather than controversial medicine. That can take place elsewhere.
"The tabloid press love to knock Harley Street. Most of the criticism is levelled at the cosmetic side of it.
"But if you look at Harley Street, the vast majority of what goes on is serious medicine.
"Maybe we are oversensitive about image, but as a landlord, image is important to us."
The list of activities proscribed by the estate also includes euthanasia and human cloning - in case they are legalised in the future.
Michaela Aston, of the anti-abortion charity Life, said: "This sounds like a great idea.
"The fewer abortion clinics there are the better and I think it is great that someone is standing up and saying we don't want them."
But Anne Quesney, director of pro-choice group Abortion Rights, said: "This decision is reminiscent of the US, where abortion clinics are being driven underground, closed down or attacked.
"There, the anti-choice lobby's tactics have severely impacted on women's access to abortion - driving them to desperate measures.
"This is not a situation we should emulate in Britain where the overwhelming majority of the general public support women's right to make her own abortion decision - one that no woman takes lightly.
"Forty years after abortion was legalised in Britain, women's rights continue to be under threat from those who oppose abortion and want to impose their personal beliefs across the country."
Reader views (10)
I am personally disturbed at this news, in this day and age a women should be able to decide what she does with her body, not another human-being. If one rich old woman decides that all the clinics in Harley Street cannot do abortions, then maybe it is about time the Church of England fought back. It is nonsense to say you can have a health clinic but can only carry out procedures which may severely effect the future life a women or her family. I thoroughly support the views of the pro-choice group. The Howard de Walden Estate should think twice about it single mindedness. This is not just any old street this is Harley Street, shame on you. Lady de Walden and Tony Shannon must think we were all born yesterday. Your actions are a disgrace to modern society. Freedom, not dictatorship, iswhat our boys lived and died for in the last world war.
- Mrs Burbridge, London
Aiden Reid is worried about what he calls "the creeping Catholic influence in this country". For goodness sake, if you own properties you have a legal right to choose the tenants, and if this lady does not want to rent out premises to people who kill babies, all power to her elbow.
Yes, abortion is killing babies, it is not getting rid of a few inconvenient cells. We all know what causes pregnancy. If you don't want to get drunk you don't drink alcohol. If you are convinced smoking causes lung cancer, and you don't want cancer, you don't smoke. If you don't want a baby, you don't have to do what it takes to have a baby.
Apart from the vile procedure of killing a person with a heart, arms, legs, eyes, it has been established that women who have abortions are more likely than other women to suffer depression, and they also stand a higher chance of miscarriage in the future.
Now, for those who are convinced there is nothing immoral about abortion, consider the effect on society. When you're 90 don't moan when you can't get a plymber and don't grumble because pensions have actually gone down because the nation does not have enough young people paying into the National Insurance Fund. Abortionists are killing the little geese that were destined to lay our golden eggs.
A society with an imbalance of generations cannot survive.
- Rose Of York, England
Oh for the love of God. Just set more clinics up elsewhere. Let the woman decide how she wants to live her life, not the government, not landlords, not other people, not religion.
- Sm Hearmon, London
The 90 acres of the De Walden Estate was initially bought from King James for £829 and smartly kept in the family for hundreds of years. Thus the De Waldens are now among the wealthiest landowners in Europe, worth well in excess of £14 Billion. It’s highly disturbing that landed gentry can apparently lay down such a human rights-restricting law unchallenged.
If Lady De Walden does not wish her Catholic sensibilities to be offended by abortions being carried out on Harley Street perhaps she should consider putting that part of the estate up for sale. However, I am certain that such a suggestion would be greeted with derision – the entire estate clearly having to stay in the family at all costs.
- Raymond Dunthorne, St Albans, UK
For women’s rights to be marched back forty years (The Abortion Act came into effect in 1968) on nought but the whim of a titled land owner represents one small step backwards for society and a great big leap backwards for London. Thanks to Lady De Walden perhaps we’ll soon be able to put 15 per cent of maternal death put down to illegal abortion again, as we did in the 1920s. That’d be something of a hand-me-down wouldn’t it?
- Raymond Dunthorne, St Albans, UK
Aiden - Landlords can do, within the law, whatever they want. This is within the law. If a doctor wants to practice abortion they can go elsewhere.
Personally I think its good that someone wants to stand up for the beliefs.
- Titch, Chesterfield, UK
Best piece of news I've heard all week.
In my opionion, abortion on demand should be terminated.
- Ted, Shetland Isles
This seem the be yet another example of the creeping catholic influence in this country. Whether they like it or not abortion is quite rightly legal and it is not for the likes of this landlord to stop doctors who are acting entirely within the law. The sooner that a stop is put to the malign influence of religious groups the better!
- Aiden Reid, London
What's the big deal? It's hardly like you can't go off to an abortion clinic elsewhere in London is it? Harley Street does have a bit of a bad reputation and getting rid of lifestyle abortion clinics would definitely improve it.
Shame the pro-abortion lobby can't see that.
- Michelle Aston, London
Anne Quesney's reaction is typical of the current panicky tone of the pro-abortion lobby. Modern medicine can be used to promote and affirm life or to destroy it. Good on the Estate for having the guts to stand up to the verbal bullies of the pro-abortion lobby!
- Emma, London
