Police are investigating after an unborn baby died when its mother took abortion drugs at home while 28 weeks pregnant. The drugs were mailed under a new lax “home abortion” scheme set up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

According to a report by The Sun, abortion giant The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), which runs the “pills by post” service, has confirmed it is investigating the case, plus eight more where women took the pills beyond the ten-week limit.

Responding to these developments, SPUC's Deputy CEO, John Deighan, said:

“If these reports prove true, the cases are a shocking indictment of BPAS and the whole UK abortion regime. The growing cavalier approach to abortion by successive governments and a rampant abortion industry have now reached the stage where back street abortions have become uncontrolled and unsupervised bedroom abortions facilitated by those supposedly in charge of the health of our citizens.”

Mr Deighan added: “It has always been clear to us that a phone consultation is a dangerous basis on which to make abortion pills available. The measures introduced in March by the Government are proving to be as reckless and dangerous as SPUC predicted when we wrote to Health Secretaries Matt Hancock and Jeane Freeman.

“SPUC wrote to the Government in March expressing our concerns that the legal gestational limits could not be confidently determined via a phone call, and how a proper assessment of the woman’s health condition was impossible to conduct over the phone. For example, if a woman has an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy, such a system could allow the abortion to go ahead with life-threatening consequences. This dangerous abortion policy must be reversed. And the government must be held fully accountable for the outcome of this rash, ill-advised regime of abortion provision.

“The abortion pill puts women through a terrible emotional and physical ordeal. The determination of the abortion industry, and compliant politicians in Westminster and Holyrood, to push women to undergo this in their own home with no real medical supervision, illustrates their cavalier attitude when it comes to the well-being of women. It also betrays a callous disregard for the life of the innocent babies that are killed in this dreadful way.

“Our abortion laws have corrupted and hardened the hearts of many health professionals working in this area and the political voices that give them encouragement.

“There is always a better choice than abortion for women facing unwanted pregnancy, with the proper care and support they will be able to support their child.”

Mr Deighan said: “This quick fix pays no attention to the long-term consequences for women and their families and I urge them not to be taken in and take these dangerous drugs if offered them by anyone. They are not fit to be deemed part of healthcare.”

SPUC posed 4 key questions to the governments at UK and Scotland level:

1. How will abortion providers or registered medical practitioners operating remotely be certain that a pregnancy is under nine weeks and six days? Remote abortion provision relies on a woman self-dating her pregnancy by her last menstrual period (LMP). Studies report that as many as one half of women do not accurately recall their LMP. Abortion pills taken after 10 weeks give rise to significant complications. In one UK study 53% of medical abortions after 13 weeks required surgical intervention.

2. How will remote abortion assessment ensure that a woman is not being coerced into having the abortion? This is of particular concern at a time of rising domestic violence. Lord Bethell spoke of the ‘essential safeguard’ of a woman attending a clinic ‘to ensure there are no issues’. He made particular reference to vulnerable women under pressure from an abusive partner. In our view, remote abortions facilitate a serious form of domestic violence by opening the opportunity for unchecked coercion from abusive men and an opportunity for abusers to cover their tracks. 

3. How will serious medical issues such as ectopic pregnancy be identified via an electronic consultation? 

4. How can your department justify exposing women to the threat of death? The extent of the radical nature of remote abortion provision can be seen in the extensive complications listed by abortion providers, including bpas. Death is included in the bpas list (1 in 100,000). One researcher found a death rate of 0.009% from medical abortion. Applied to the abortion data from England and Wales, the number of deaths each year from medical abortion might be expected to be around 11 per year.

SPUC’s Chief Executive, John Smeaton, said: “The first concern of SPUC under this new, if temporary, regime, is the potential for even greater loss of unborn human lives. This DIY abortion scheme further erodes this dignity of human life before birth. Very closely aligned to our concern for unborn babies, is our concern for the health and wellbeing of women.

A recent SPUC study to mark the 50th anniversary of abortion legislation revealed the "horrific" impact of abortion on the health of women including a catalogue of physical and mental problems linked to terminations.

Research on the impact of abortion has uncovered alarming concerns about women’s health at a time when around 550 abortions take place each day in the UK and the number of abortions carried out since 1968 is fast approaching 9 million.

 The findings include:

• women are more likely to die from any cause after abortion versus giving birth.
• suicide is around six times greater after abortion than after childbirth.
• abortion is associated with significantly higher death rates for women up to ten years after an abortion, compared with women who gave birth.
• women described significant grief three years after abortion.
• a 30% increased risk of depression and a 25% increased risk of anxiety following abortion.
• women who had abortions experienced mental health disorders 30% more often compared to women who had not had an abortion.
• depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are also associated with the subsequent pregnancies of women who have had an abortion.
• women who have had an abortion are at a higher risk of psychiatric admission compared to women who keep their babies.
• women having medical abortions may experience hospital admission, blood transfusion, emergency room treatment, administration of IV antibiotics and infection.