The Cambridge Hospital has begun giving free on-site abortions for low-income women, now that the facility is staffed by clinicians willing to perform the controversial procedure.

The hospital, a Medical School affiliate, emphasized this week that the service is not new, but rather the final step in the implementation of an already existing policy.

"We have always had a policy where we have wanted to have the full array of reproduction and women's health services," said John G. O'Brien '72, the hospital's chief executive officer. "What we have simply done is to garner the resources to implement our existing policy."

O'Brien said the hospital finally found the clinicians necessary to offer abortion services earlier this year.

"We have not had many clinicians who were willing to do abortions," O'Brien said. "We have now clinicians who are willing to make these services available."

The hospital's abortion services are for low-income women who cannot afford the $300 to $400 that the abortion might cost elsewhere. The hospital is currently averaging three or four abortions per week, O'Brien said.

"It is particularly important that we have the service available for very low income people who cannot [afford] the services at regional centers, who provide the full array of abortion and counseling services," O'Brien said.

But O'Brien said the number of women who fall into the category of need is quite limited. He said women with the resources to pay are typically referred to pre-term or other women's healthcenters.

There have been no protests of the new serviceby anti-abortion activists, O'Brien said.

The Cambridge Hospital "provides the greatmajority of services for free," said O'Brien, whoestimated that 30 percent of all care is free careat a cost to the hospital of $27 million per year.

This past June, the hospital was the winner ofthe $75,000 Foster G. McGaw Prize, a prestigiousnational award for excellence in communityservice.

In presenting the award, the Illinois-basedphilanthropic Baxter Foundation and the AmericanHospital Association cited the hospital's programssuch as health care for the homeless, house callsfor the homebound elderly and a school-based teenhealth center