Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that medical complications and associated risks arising from at-home tablet-induced abortions are accurately monitored, recorded, and reported.

It is a legal requirement in England and Wales that all terminations must be notified to the Chief Medical Officer within 14 days of the procedure. The Department provides the HSA4 form for this purpose. Information is collected on the abortion and the woman that had the abortion, including the method of the abortion, whether any abortion pills were taken at home, the gestation, or number of weeks, and details of any known complications.

The Department publishes data from these notifications in annual abortion statistics reports, which include data on complications up until the time of discharge from the abortion service.

In November 2023, the Department published a one-time analysis comparing data from the Department’s Abortion Notification System and the Hospital Episode Statistics, which are produced and controlled by NHS England.

Abortion continues to be a very safe procedure for which major complications are rare at all gestations. The complication rates for the Abortion Notification System and the Hospital Episodes Statistics data remains similar to both before and after the introduction of the home use of early medical abortion pills.