Pro choice or no choice?

Jul 18, 2021 by

Since the height of the Covid pandemic, abortion providers in the UK have been legally permitted to send out the two pills that induce medical abortion by post. This means that women who are under 10 weeks’ pregnant can currently request, receive and take these pills without any human contact other than a short telephone call. One woman described the process of getting the abortion pills as “easier than getting a takeaway”.

This kind of service is fraught with difficulties. How can the provider ensure that the woman is below the 10-week safety limit for medical abortion? How can they make sure these controlled drugs are taken by the woman who calls and not, for example, to cover up the abuse of a teenage girl? How can abortion providers rule out coercion from a partner or member of the family?

But crucially these services seem to have increased the number of women who immediately regret their decision to abort.

The first abortion pill, mifepristone, starts to break down the attachment of the fetus to the wall of the uterus. In the circumstances where an unwanted miscarriage is threatened, a woman may be offered progesterone treatment. Although not specifically licensed for use to reverse the effects of mifepristone in the UK, a treatment of progesterone to reverse the effects of the abortion pill makes medical sense. Americans know this well and the significant research undertaken there demonstrates that it is a safe and effective treatment.

So how do abortion providers in the UK such as Marie Stopes respond to a woman who gets in touch in a distressed state having taken mifepristone and then changed her mind about wanting to abort her baby? A recent statement claims that they offer “support and counselling” in this situation, but the reality seems rather different. The women I have spoken to say they have been told that they “must take the second pill” and have been pressured to do so; “to consult their GP”; or to “do nothing and see what happens”.

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