A number of news outlets have today carried articles reporting on a study which shows “that enabling women to have early abortions at home during the pandemic is safe and effective.” On the back of this, bodies such as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists are calling on the Government to make the temporary home abortion provision permanent.

However, the study does not come from a neutral source. Two of the authors of this study are Patricia Lohr and Jonathan Lord – respectively the medical directors of BPAS and Marie Stopes, the country’s two biggest abortion providers. Another author, Nabanita Ghosh, is from NUPAS, also an abortion provider. This is not objective research.

Of course, we will be looking into this paper thoroughly. But even at this stage we can see some obvious flaws in using this study as a basis for supporting the continued provision of pills through the post abortion.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Clare Murphy, the recently appointed CEO of bpas, says that: “There have not been many ways in which healthcare has improved during the pandemic, but this is one of them. It absolutely needs to stay.”

After enthusing about how safe home abortion is, Ms Murphy talks about how “women’s experience is also key – 96% of women were satisfied, and none reported that they were not able to consult in private.” Here, she is addressing a key concern about at-home abortion – that women might not be alone when they order the pills, and could be coerced into an abortion. But I’m afraid that a study reporting that no women were unable to consult alone does not convince me that no women are in this situation. If a woman has an abuser beside her when ordering the pills, someone asking down the phone if she’s alone is hardly going to make her admit that she isn’t, is it?

And we have proof that abortion providers are unable to establish whether a woman is indeed alone. Last year Christian Concern commissioned a mystery shopper investigation into pills-by-post, DIY abortion at home. A team of volunteers made calls to the abortion providers, posing as pregnant women seeking an abortion. In one scenario, a volunteer posed as a woman being coerced by her abusive partner into making the call and doing the abortion at home. When making her calls to the abortion provider, the abusive partner was sat beside the woman prompting her to give the ‘right’ answers. The abortion provider on the phone call was not able to discover this clear and present coercion.

The study also seeks to explain away another clear failure of telemedicine – the fact that there are clearly documented cases of women being sent the pills past the ten week legal limit (horrifically, some as late as 28 weeks). The paper airily says that “inadvertent treatment of gestations over 10 weeks is inevitable, and, consistent with our findings, the consequences for most are unlikely to be medically significant.” The Government should take note that abortion providers admit that they are breaking the law, and are attempting to justify it. The casual dismissal of such cases as being “medically insignificant” also ignores the trauma a woman is likely to experience when she unexpectedly delivers a dead, developed baby, after being told to expect some blood and clotting.

Shockingly, the paper doubles down on the flouting of the law, saying: “The 10 weeks gestation limit in the English Government’s approval order is arbitrary, and not based on evidence of safety or effectiveness”. This is misleading – there is abundant evidence that complications increase with gestation. On its website, BPAS shows how these increase in the 9^th week of pregnancy compared to the first 8 weeks. For example, incomplete abortions jump from occurring in 3/100 cases to 7/100, in just one week later and still within the 10-week limit. One study found a 38% increase in complications for each week.[1] In one UK study more than 50% of women having medical abortions after 13 weeks needed subsequent surgical intervention.[2]

These facts alone should make the Government very wary of using this study as a basis for abortion policy. Some of the other claims made, (such as complication rates being less for telemedicine than in-clinic treatment) also sound extremely dubious, and will need careful scrutiny by experts. But for now, forgive me if a paper written by the abortion providers who championed the DIY abortion policy, does not do away with my concerns that it is unsafe, unregulated and unethical.

The Government’s consultation on DIY abortion runs until 26 February. Guidance on responding to it can be found here. A similar consultation by the Welsh Government runs until 23 February, and guidance can be found here.