A shocking new report shows that ambulance calls for abortion complications rose by 54% during 2020 following the introduction of DIY abortions.

“This new data reveals a whole catalogue of horrors”, said SPUC’s Alithea Williams. “This new report shows that every month hundreds of women are having to go to hospital for complications for a procedure they were told was safe to have at home. Dozens of them are being taken there by emergency ambulance. How is this caring for women?”

The report was researched and written by public health consultant and former Marie Stopes International director Kevin Duffy and details the results of freedom of information requests to the Care Quality Commission (CQC), NHS Hospital Trusts, and NHS Ambulance Trusts.

The findings include:

• On average 36 women make 999 calls every month seeking medical assistance for complications arising from the taking of abortion pills; each month across England and Wales there are an average of 20 ambulance emergency responses for complications related to medical abortion at home.
• Despite calls for ambulance services in general being 25% lower than the previous year, because of lockdown, the calls in 2020 including the words "abortion pills", "mifepristone" or "misoprostol" are 54% higher than the same period in 2019.
• Every month, 495 women attend hospital with complications arising from retained products of conception.
• Each month, 250 women using abortion pills at home will require hospital treatment to surgically remove retained products of conception.
• The CQC investigated 29 serious incidents where women who had accessed early medical abortion (EMA) had suffered complications; 17 of these women had accessed the pills by post post.
•  CQC data reveals 19 cases where women were treated for complications after taking the pills over the legal limit of 10 weeks for early medical abortion. 11 of these 19 cases were resulting from women accessing pills by post.

Contrary to claims by BPAS and others that home abortion have lowered complication rates, the data in the report shows that they are at the same levels as the last five years.

 “The report also confirms what has been obvious all along – that this policy is impossible to regulate”, Miss Williams went on. “Women are being sent these pills way past the ten week limit – four cases were even over 24 weeks.

“It is also clear that complications are being severely underreported. The Department of Health needs to sit up and take notice of these appalling figures and end this policy immediately.”

The report says: “It would be simple for the DHSC to gather these data from NHS Hospitals and Ambulance services and to use these alongside the data on the HSA4 forms from the abortion providers when it is considering the safety and effectiveness of medical abortion at home. Continuing to conduct a public consultation without fully considering and assessing all available data does not seem to be a prudent or proper approach.”

You can read the report here.

The Government consultation on early medical abortion runs until 26 February. Guidance on completing it (produced before these figures were released) can be found here.