Women are being wrongly warned during counselling sessions at allegedly "independent" clinics that an abortion could lead to serious health damage, including an increased risk of breast cancer and a propensity to sexually abuse children, The Telegraph can disclose.

The women are also being mistakenly informed by counsellors that the procedure could leave them unable to carry future pregnancies to full term.

Counsellors at two Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPCs) - clinics that provide advice to women considering a termination - were secretly recorded making the claims last month by Telegraph reporters.

The disclosure will add to growing calls for increased regulation of abortion services amid fears that both pro-life and anti-abortion clinics and services are not offering reliable advice.

Dr Kate Guthrie, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the UK’s medical authority on pregnancy and women’s reproductive health, said there was no scientific evidence to suggest an abortion put women at a greater risk of breast cancer or abusing a child.

She also said that the risk of being left sterile by an abortion in Britain is "very, very low” and it is “absolutely wrong” that women would be 25 percent less likely to carry pregnancy to full term following an abortion, as one of the counsellors maintained.