Pro-life doctor warns over DIY procedures: ‘It turns every home into a back-street abortion facility’

Dr Anne McCloskey, a GP and councillor in Londonderry, likened the procedures to “back street” abortions.

She was reacting to news, published in the News Letter yesterday, that an online course on home abortions is to be delivered today by a group called Alliance for Choice.

The group has stressed that there is a consensus among medical bodies, including the World Health Organisation, that such procedures are safe.

And Dr Claire Pierson, a politics lecturer at the University of Liverpool, contacted the News Letter to say “telemedicine for early medical abortion services is now legal in England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland, and in particular with the effects of the pandemic on people’s ability to travel (even locally), Northern Ireland is seriously lagging behind in terms of service provision”.

But the Department of Health told the News Letter: “Women are at risk if they access unregulated abortion services – the department’s view is that that services should be properly delivered through direct medical supervision within the health and social care system.”

Dr McCloskey wrote: “Home abortions’ are in my view the ultimate in domestic violence, and allows every home in the land to become a back-street abortion facility.

“However, moral and ethical issues aside, there are very important health dangers of women self administering potent and prescription only medication without medical supervision.”

She said there is, for instance, “no ultrasound validation of how far a pregnancy has progressed”.

She added: “Women who are victims of domestic abuse or coercive control could be acting under duress, and not able to give informed and legal consent to the procedure.

“There are significant medical complications which can arise from medical abortions. With increasing gestational age, women frequently need surgical treatment for retained products of conception... Other problems include haemorrhage, sepsis, uterine rupture and death. The last two are rare, but two women have died this year in the UK from complications arising from home abortions.