After a trial period during the epidemic, women in England and Wales will have permanent access to early medical abortions at home beginning the following week.
The introduction of ‘pills by mail’ abortions, which can be used to end a pregnancy within the first 10 weeks, occurred in early 2020 when traditional abortion services were discontinued.
Thousands of women will be able to terminate their pregnancies in the privacy of their own homes rather than traveling to a clinic or hospital.
Women will always be able to obtain abortion pills by a phone call or online consultation with a doctor from the comfort of their own homes.
Initially, ministers intended to eliminate the program this summer, but they were defeated by a vote in March.
The Department of Health and Social Care stated that physicians will be required to certify in “good faith” that the pills are being used solely to terminate pregnancies.
The ruling follows a record number of terminations carried out in England and Wales in the previous year.
According to government figures, about 215,000 abortions were performed in the two nations in 2021, an increase of 2% from the previous year.
According to a report from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, more than half of the suicides were carried out at home via the pills-by-mail service.
Today, Minister of Public Health Maggie Throup stated, “The health and safety of women requiring access to abortion services are of the utmost importance.”
With these reforms, women will have more options for accessing abortion services, and thorough data will be collected to assure their continued safety.
Additionally, doctors will be compelled to document the location of the consultation and the termination.
This data, according to the government, will permit research of trends in at-home abortions to better comprehend the usage of remote services.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health will shortly issue guidelines for administering abortion pills to minors, according to the government.
This will ensure that children who require abortion services can get them, but that safeguards are in place in the event of suspected abuse.
The “pills by mail” consist of two drugs given at least 24 hours apart: mifepristone and misoprostol.
Women initially take mifepristone, which prevents progesterone, a hormone required to maintain pregnancy, from functioning.
Misoprostol contains prostaglandin, a hormone that stimulates the uterus to contract and thereby induces an abortion.
Before the pandemic, women took their first pill in an abortion clinic or hospital under the care of a physician.
The second pill could then be taken at home up to 48 hours later.
To guarantee that women still had access to early abortions, ministers amended the laws to allow both pills to be administered at home after a teleconsultation when the virus struck.
British women who are pregnant for more than nine weeks and six days are eligible for an abortion under the National Health Service.
In the United Kingdom, the normal limit for these abortions is 24 weeks, however, they can be performed after that in extremely limited instances.
These include situations in which the continuation of the pregnancy will endanger the mother’s life or in which a test reveals the child has a significant impairment.
Surgical abortions accounted for only 13% of terminations in the United Kingdom last year, a small fraction of the total.
The frequency of abortions performed on women aged 35 and older has increased during the past decade. 2011 saw 27,199 terminations, whereas 2021 will see 40,789.
