Our 10-year struggle to improve abortion care

17.02.2011 ‘Not so much Yes Minister as The Thick of It…’ Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, reports on her fight with health officials for sensible abortion services.

On Valentine’s Day 2011, the Honourable Mr Justice Supperstone, sitting in London’s High Court of Justice, ‘in the matter of the Abortion Act 1967’, found against the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and for the secretary of state for health. It’s a crying shame; BPAS was trying to solve a problem that has been annoying women, abortion providers, and, paradoxically, health officials for the past decade.

At issue was whether the 1967 Abortion Act could be interpreted in line with advances in medical science enabling early medical abortion patients to take some of the medication at home rather than in a clinic. This would have put an end to women making multiple, medically unnecessary visits to clinics and eliminated the risk of abortion symptoms beginning – and in some cases the miscarriage itself occurring – as they travelled home after taking the tablets. It would have brought UK medical abortion practice, governed by laws dating back to the 1960s (when abortion pills would have seemed like futurist science fiction), into line with international standards of care.

There is no clinical argument against the change that BPAS wants to bring about. As I recently explained in an article for spiked, at issue was what seems to be a very superficial change to current practice. Currently, a woman opting for an early medical abortion has to administer the medication necessary to prompt bleeding and cramping in a clinic and then travel home. The BPAS change would have allowed doctors to give her the tablets to take once she got home – if this is what she wanted.

In our experience this is what most women want. Only exceptionally do women wish to stay at the clinic for an unpredictable number of hours until their miscarriage is complete. They prefer to be able to be at home, in their own surroundings, with whomever they want to be with. The current problem is that once the tablets are taken, symptoms can start at any time. It is usually a couple of hours – but it can be later, or sooner. more on >>