An anti-abortion Catholic centre for the study of ethical healthcare has raised concern at possible risk from displacement by a new NHS GP practice.

The Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics is a bioethical think-tank for the Catholic Church.

The Centre is located within the private Catholic hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, currently facing criticism from the Vatican after making the decision to lease its premises to National Health Service physicians.

NHS Physicians as public employees are obligated to refer for abortions and to prescribe chemical abortifacients and contraceptives.

The UK’s leading Catholic prelate, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has since launched an inquiry into the hospital.

A spokesman for Cardinal Cormac-O’Murphy said: “For some years there have been concerns over the code of ethics and its application. At the heart of what the inquiry will be looking at is the question, ‘What is a Catholic hospital and what stance should it take on ethical issues in medicine? Obviously a Catholic hospital must witness to Catholic teaching, but it must also serve everyone.”

Centre director Dr. Helen Watt said, according to the Telegraph, “We and others are concerned by the hospital’s proposal to move an NHS GP practice into the space the Linacre Centre now occupies.” Ms Watt raised the concern that NHS physicians “will be obliged by their NHS contracts to provide abortion and contraception referrals or prescriptions – for example, for the morning-after pill.

“Neither the NHS practice, nor the private GP practice at the hospital, nor other hospital doctors should be permitted to facilitate abortion,” stressed Dr. Watt. “We would urge the hospital to use this opportunity to re-commit to a truly Catholic ethos, in which women are offered unequivocal support with their pregnancies.”

The hospital currently refers women for abortions only where physicians deem them “medically necessary”. Dr. Watt said this was “the compromise between Catholic belief and the hospital’s philosophy of care.”