During the covid-19 epidemic, the UK government temporarily approved the use of medication abortion (that is, inducing an abortion using mifepristone and misoprostol pills) at home after a telephone or online consultation with a clinician. This is different from the procedure before the pandemic, where women were obliged to attend a clinic in order to obtain the pills for abortion. They also needed to take the first pill (mifepristone) at the clinic and could only take the rest of the medication at home.
The UK government has now opened a consultation, which gathers views on whether this arrangement should be made permanent. The consultation is open to all and the deadline is 26 February 2021.
Together with other abortion research experts, we put together an indicative list of points, which could be mentioned should you decide to reply to this consultation. We strongly believe, and there are data to back it up too, that the introduction of telemedicine has been beneficial and should be continued. Please do write your answer to the consultation in your own words, but at the same time do feel free to use ours as a template and a starting point. We owe a lot of this to BPAS, who have also published their own template (PDF), which we also recommend reading.
The researchers who contributed here were: Heini Väisänen, Katy Footman, Joe Strong, Rishita Nandagiri, Rachel Scott, Tiziana Leone and Ernestina Coast.
Please answer the consultation here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/home-use-of-both-pills-for-early-medical-abortion/home-use-of-both-pills-for-early-medical-abortion-up-to-10-weeks-gestation
Our template can be downloaded below (in a PDF format):
Heini Väisänen 