UPDATE, 3/24/20: The Independent UK now reports that a prior announcement stating that the UK government would begin allowing at-home DIY abortions by pill will not move forward and was “published in error. There will be no changes to abortion regulations.”
3/23/20: The government of the United Kingdom has authorized dangerous at-home abortions for women in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Women will be given both pills used in chemical abortions without seeing a medical professional. In a statement, the government said:
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has approved 2 temporary measures in England to limit the transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) and ensure continued access to early medical abortion services:
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women and girls will be able to take both pills for early medical abortion in their own homes, without the need to first attend a hospital or clinic
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medical practitioners (doctors) will be able to prescribe both pills for the treatment of early medical abortion from their own homes
This decision will leave women at risk for severe effects that could have been prevented had they been seen by a doctor beforehand. Without an ultrasound, a pregnancy cannot be properly dated and the abortion pill is only intended to be used during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The abortion pill can not only fail if used after 10 weeks, but the risks of the abortion pill to the mother’s health increase as the pregnancy progresses. In addition, if the woman is unknowingly experiencing an ectopic pregnancy — which would be detected via ultrasound — taking the abortion pill could put her life at risk.
“This is a dangerous and ill-thought-through move,” said Antonia Tully, Director of Campaigns for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. “Mifepristone and misoprostol [the two drugs used in the abortion pill] are powerful drugs designed to kill an unborn baby – the rules regulating them shouldn’t be changed in this way.”
“The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has been campaigning for these DIY abortions for months, as part of a propaganda campaign to assure women that abortion pills are safe and simple, when they are anything but,” she continued. “Now they are exploiting a time of national crisis to make this ideological change.”
READ: Six ways the abortion industry is pushing for dangerous ‘DIY’ abortions
The abortion industry in the United States is currently attempting to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in similar fashion. Abortion proponents have increased their push for DIY abortions over the past several months, petitioning the FDA to lift its safety requirements on the abortion pill — not just for the pandemic, but permanently.
About half of all states in the U.S. do not require the reporting of abortion complications, including from the abortion pill. Women who take the pills and experience complications are frequently told to tell the emergency room personnel that they are having a natural miscarriage. Therefore, there is no accurate data pointing to safety for women taking the abortion pill, no matter how desperately the abortion industry wants to spin it as safe.
Prescribing the abortion pill to women without first examining them can lead to serious consequences that injure or kill perfectly healthy women. Abortion is neither health care nor essential and when women ultimately experience complications from taking the abortion pill at home, they will be treated at already burdened emergency rooms. The abortionists, meanwhile, won’t have to deal with any of the aftermath of at-home abortions, but will collect the money to irresponsibly hand out the pills and leave women to suffer any ill consequences alone.
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