Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many women have suffered (a) ruptured ectopic pregnancies, (b) haemorrhage, (c) uterine perforation, (d) sepsis and (e) cervical tear complications following the use of medical abortion pills at home since March 2020.
The information is not held in the format requested as abortion notification forms (HSA4) submitted by clinics and hospitals to the Chief Medical Officer at the Department do not record the number of individual women. From 1 April 2020 to 31 December 2020 eight complications involving haemorrhage after early medical abortion for residents of England and Wales were notified to the Department, where one or both medications were taken at home. No complications related to perforation, sepsis or cervical tear were notified. We do not hold information on ruptured ectopic pregnancies. Data for 2021 will be published in June 2022.
The Department is undertaking a project to review the system of recording abortion complications data and we anticipate this work will be completed shortly. The review will cover all data on complications arising from abortion including home use of early medical abortion pills.
To improve the accuracy of the data collected, the Department is working closely with a range of statutory bodies, professional organisations and abortion providers to identify additional sources of information that could be used to complement complications data collected via HSA4 abortion notification forms and improve the flow of data on abortion complications between different organisations, such as independent and National Health Service abortion providers and wider NHS health and care services.