Members of Parliament advanced a bill last week that would require the United Kingdom (UK) to publish an annual report detailing abortion complications.
The Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill passed its second reading in the House of Lords on Thursday and will next advance to the committee stage. It would require that the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care publish a comprehensive report of abortion complications each year.
The bill’s sponsor, Lord Moylan, explained that the current method of reporting is incomplete as it comes directly from abortion facilities and often doesn’t include women who visit their general practitioner or the hospital with complications. The discrepancy may be due in part to the fact that the majority of abortions are now chemical abortions completed at home, not at an abortion facility.
“Currently about 85% of abortions are medically induced, that is, by taking a sequence of pills,” he said. “This shows that the abortion landscape is shifting quite rapidly and clinicians need to have available the most robust data about complications.
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Many liberal MPs spoke out against the proposal, with one saying he viewed it as a way to restrict abortion.
“This Bill is a backdoor attempt to try and limit abortion in this country using statistical jiggery pokery as a smokescreen to do that,” claimed Lord Scriven.
One of the bill’s supporters, Lord Frost, noted that the bill was simply a way to ensure that women have as much information about abortion as they can. “I find it hard to see personally why we would not want as much information as we could possibly get on this question” since there is “clear evidence for at least a potential anomaly that needs addressing in the statistics,” he said. “And it’s surely in the interests of any woman considering an abortion to have the best possible information about the possible risks involved.”
These possible risks include a number of life-threatening complications, including perforation of the uterus or cervix which can also damage other organs, infection, hemorrhaging, scar tissue, damage to the uterine lining, and even death. Aside from surgical abortion, the abortion pill in the first trimester is reportedly four times riskier than a first-trimester surgical abortion. Despite these risks, many women are simply told that abortion is “routine healthcare” without ever realizing that women have died from abortion.
Right to Life UK spokesperson Catherine Robinson praised the legislation.
“This Bill is a much-needed step forward in improving transparency around abortion complications. It proposes a common-sense change to policy that MPs and Peers, regardless of where they stand on the issue of abortion, should support,” Robinson said. “A Government review published last year revealed that abortion complication rates are likely much higher than has been previously reported in the annual abortion statistics, which are based on reporting from abortion providers. The new Government needs to urgently introduce measures to ensure that abortion complications data is accurately collected and reliably reported on.”
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