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Press release: Troubled abortion provider reports largest gender pay gap – men paid 44.7% more than women

9 April 2019 – Abortion provider Marie Stopes International has reported the largest gender pay gap among UK’s 100 largest charities with men on average earning 44.7% more than women.

This finding comes after a series of reports from the Care Quality Commission accused Marie Stopes of mistreating women undergoing abortions in their clinics in the UK. This included a damning report accusing Marie Stopes International of paying staff bonuses for encouraging women to undergo terminations. At all 70 Marie Stopes clinics, inspectors found evidence of a policy which saw staff utilise a high-pressure sales tactic, calling women who had decided against having an abortion to offer them another appointment.

Abortions at Marie Stopes were suspended for a month in August 2016 after inspectors “found dead foetuses lying in an open bin and staff trying to give a vulnerable, visibly distressed woman an abortion without her consent”.

In 2012, a woman called Aisha Chithira, 32, bled to death in a taxi after having an abortion in Ealing Marie Stopes. A Marie Stopes doctor and two nurses were charged and then acquitted of gross negligence manslaughter.

In 2015, Marie Stopes reported that it paid 22 of its employees more than £100,000 and their CEO, Simon Cooke, took home one of the UK’s largest charity salaries, with a total of £420,755 between his basic salary and a bonus of over £250,000.

In addition to taxpayer funding for its UK operations, Marie Stopes International was paid £163 million over a five year period by the UK government to run its overseas operations.

The organisation’s income from the taxpayer is set to increase with the announcement on Monday that they will join International Planned Parenthood Federation on leading on a project including abortion provision which will receive £42 million from the Government. This is despite polling showing that 65% of women oppose taxpayer money going to fund abortions overseas.

Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Clare McCarthy has said:

“Marie Stopes have a terrible track record with regard to their mistreatment of women facing unplanned pregnancies both here in the UK and in their international operations. Now it appears that this disregard for women extends into their workforce, with men being paid an average of 44.7% more than women. Counter to the Marie Stopes International narrative that their ethos is to ‘empower women’, the evidence points to the contrary.

“Marie Stopes International have had a series of failures towards women over the past number of years including evidence of pressuring women into abortions, doctors pre-signing abortion consent forms and even a woman dying of ‘extensive internal bleeding’ after an abortion at a Marie Stopes clinic.

“Their disproportionately large gender pay gap is another embarrassing failure to add to the list.”

ENDS