Pope is asked to step in over abortion row

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The Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in St John's Wood - whose past maternity patients include Heather Mills and Kate Moss - is locked in a dispute over a new code requiring staff at the Catholic hospital to comply with Church teachings.

The code forbids staff and resident GPs from providing contraceptives and abortion referrals. It also bans amniocentesis to detect Down's syndrome in unborn children, which has a risk of miscarriage, and in vitro fertilisation.

But the hospital, run as a Catholic charity, has delayed its introduction in the face of opposition from doctors and executives who have threatened to quit if they are made to comply.

A Catholic lobby group now plans to ask Pope Benedict XVI to end the impasse by ordering the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, to use his legal authority to insist the code is implemented.

The Restituta Group is particularly concerned that an NHS general practice being set up at the hospital will provide family planning services. Restituta secretary Nicolas Bellord said: "The Catholic authorities have been totally ineffective in preventing this happening."

A spokesman for the Archbishop said: "The Cardinal is actively engaged in finding a solution." No one at the hospital was available for comment.