Paramedic who secretly gave pregnant woman abortion drug is struck off

A paramedic jailed for secretly giving a pregnant woman an abortion drug, killing their unborn child, has been kicked out of the profession.

Stephen Doohan was already married when he met the woman on holiday in Spain in 2021 and began a long-distance relationship.

The woman, who did not know he had a wife, travelled to Edinburgh to see him after learning she was pregnant.

Doohan crushed abortion pills into a syringe and injected her as she lay in bed after the two of them had sex there in March 2023.

He pleaded guilty to sexual assault and depositing a drug into her vagina causing her to abort, and depositing with intent to cause her to abort and was jailed for more than 10 years at Galsgow’s High Court last July.

Doohan has now been removed from the healthcare professionals register in light of those convictions.

In their ruling, a Health and Care Professionals Tribunal Service panel said it would be ‘failing in its duty to declare and uphold proper standards of conduct and behaviour in the paramedic profession if it did not find impairment in this case’.

They added: ‘The Panel was satisfied that a reasonable and informed member of the public would be extremely shocked and troubled if there was no finding of impairment where, using his knowledge as a paramedic, [Doohan] had planned an illegal abortion by using unauthorised access to medical information via his workplace, had then deliberately and intentionally sexually assaulted his partner to abort their unborn child, and had later attempted to persuade her to take the blame for the illegal abortion.’

Last year, the High Court heard the crimes occurred over 48 hours, starting on March 17 at Doohan’s flat in Edinburgh.

Judge Lord Colbeck said Doohan had told the victim that he did not want children, but she later became pregnant.

The judge said: ‘She felt something hard being inserted into her vagina and believed this was a sex toy.’

However, the following day, after discovering unusual discharge in her underwear, and suffering stomach cramps, she returned to Doohan’s flat.

The judge said: ‘She took some diazepam and went into a deep sleep, and felt you initiating sexual contact.

‘She felt you inserting something hard from under the mattress. She was suspicious of your actions.

‘When you went to the bathroom, she took the opportunity to look under the mattress.’

The woman found some tablets hidden under the mattress, the court heard.

Lord Colbeck added: ‘The complainer then carried out an internet search for abortion tablets and confronted you over your actions.’

The court heard that Doohan ‘rehearsed what she was to say’ before they attended hospital in Edinburgh due to stomach cramps on March 18, and the day after, she attended a regional hospital with her sister so she could ‘disclose’ what had happened, but was told she was having a miscarriage.

Lord Colbeck said: ‘You planned out what you did to your victim using resources available to you as a paramedic.’

Striking him off the register, the HCPTS panel said in its ruling: ‘The criminal conviction involved premeditated and serious sexual assaults on the registrant’s former partner on two occasions to abort their unborn child for which the registrant is now serving a lengthy prison sentence and for which he will be on the sexual offenders’ database for the rest of his life.

‘The registrant had abused his professional role when he had accessed software to research the prescription drug misoprostol used to bring about the illegal abortion.

‘The Panel was in no doubt that the serious nature of the Registrant’s offending was fundamentally incompatible with continued practice as a paramedic.’

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