To hope this very sad case stops them giving out abortion medication without scanning

[Greenmascara]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10711221/Baby-died-doctors-gave-30-week-pregnant-mother-abortion-pill-thinking-12-weeks.html

Extremely sad for mother and baby, mother is likely completely traumatised by this.

This isn't an anti abortion thread. Whilst never desirable, abortion needs to remain a safe, legal, NHS funded option so women aren't forced into buying illeagal/ dangerous pills online or having dangerous/ unsanitary abortions from backsttreet "doctors."

But I have been really, really concerned how at the start of covid, any safeguarding/ care in abortion went out the window. Pills posted out with no safeguarding concerns, and no scans to confirm pregnancy is within the legal limit.

Am I right in saying tragic, traumatic cases like this happen when you don't scan to check the gestation of pregnancy before handing out this medication ?

So in the first Daily Mail article you shared, it isn’t at all clear that the telemedical abortion service had anything to do with it. It’s unclear but it reads to me like she had the medicine in hospital, and received negligent care.

Similarly, with the second Daily Mail link, there’s no confirmation that the telemedical abortion service was involved there either. It simply says that a woman took the abortion pills at home at 28 weeks pregnant, four weeks past the legal limit, and the police are investigating. The DM has added all that stuff about the rules around abortion pills being relaxed to suggest that the two are linked - because DM readers are often anti-abortion. But the woman could have obtained the pills illegally online. She could have been forced to take them by an abusive man who sourced them illegally online. We just don’t know.

I would imagine, that this woman would desperately want an abortion for her own reasons, whatever they were, as at 30 weeks, she surely would have known how far into the pregnancy she was, as in her size and body shape and all other signs of a late on pregnancy.. And normally wouldn't risk taking any medication at all, unless she was so very desperate not to birth a baby. A truly awful situation to read about.

@HardyBuckette

To use the example you used - abortion pills are available to purchase online, without any safeguarding. Without any oversight. If someone wanted to sneakily obtain medication to slip to their wife/girlfriend, they easily could without going through the correct channels.

Yeah, the reality is that now this medication exists, abusers can get hold of it and unconsensually administer it to a woman. The NHS not offering telemedical abortion won't prevent that. There isn't an option available to us that will.

Well we can never completely eliminate the risk of abusers getting hold of these pills, pills by post makes it a lot easier.

Really sad case, can't quite ever get my head around why women don't know they're pregnant - it's a big mistake thinking you're 12 weeks when your actually a further 18 weeks along.

During a crisis these things happen though - it's like thinking a woman going into labour on a sinking ship or a building on fire is going to have a standard delivery, she isn't.

This issue is no different to sending covid infected OAPs to nursing homes to infect staff and other vulnerable people.

I'm afraid loads of decisions like this were taken early on in the pandemic and when hospitals became over ran. Have to admit I'm not sure why the nhs is funding abortions unless we're talking a vulnerable woman.

Of course these events are nothing like sending contracts for ABC supplies to your mates and wasting billions on a track and trace system that didn't work. Who knows how many people died because people in government made decisions like this and withheld PPE from nhs employees too.

Well we can never completely eliminate the risk of abusers getting hold of these pills, pills by post makes it a lot easier.

So make women who need this service jump through hoops/prevent them from accessing it legally at all, to prevent men from…getting hold of something they can get hold of with a quick google and a few clicks of a mouse.

What of the women that will, in absence of telemedical abortion being an option, turn to those sites that sell abortion pills? Who will take these pills with exactly zero oversight and safeguarding (and isn’t safeguarding your motivator?). I guess it’s fuck them too, along with the majority of women this already helps.

Infallible reasoning.

@CavernousScream

I can’t see how this has anything to do with telemedicine, when the entire incident happened in a hospital. She was terminating for medical reasons, she may have been eligible for abortion even if they’d known she was 30 weeks. There were obvious failings in care at the hospital, but that is not an argument against telemedicine which reduces the amount of people needing care in a hospital.

I agree.

@chisanunian

Oh dear. Yet another attempt to erode women's rights and autonomy over their own bodies.

Having the option to take this medication without examination is not ideal, but it is the best the NHS can manage at the moment.

Exactly.

But now pills by post exist, Brian can get his girlfriend Louise, ( whom he also abuses), to ring BPAS and request pills by post for herself.

I think I read this on your last attempt to stop women accessing abortions

I was pregnant by my stepfather at 12 years old. He couldn't access abortion pills so made me drink a bottle of sherry and gave me an abortion with some home made devices. Sadly this isn't an uncommon story. I have spoken to many like me who had abortions forced on them, some of those women are infertile and have health conditions due to it. It's obviously not a great place to be even to have pills forced on you, but given the alternative I would much rather have had them.

So if Brian is intent on aborting Lindas baby, he's going to do it - he doesnt need to get pills over the phone.

Compelling evidence from 52,142 women shows no-test telemedicine abortion is safe, effective and improves care.

So 2 very sad cases against over fifty thousand safe and effective abortions - I still think that this is the right way

Have to admit I'm not sure why the nhs is funding abortions unless we're talking a vulnerable woman.

Because it’s cheaper to fund abortion care than it is to fund pregnancy care. It’s cheaper to fund abortion care than it is to treat women who will be severely, if not fatally, injured as a result of accessing abortions they can’t otherwise afford. It’s cheaper than the state having to pay out to support a sudden surge in unwanted, abused and/or abandoned children.

The medical and social costs of providing safe abortion are far cheaper than the alternatives.

Eh the article you posted has nothing to do with your argument. The woman knew she was more than 10-weeks pregnant, hence why she was having her abortion in hospital. It was the hospitals failure to scan her that caused this. Nothing to do with women being able to access abortion meds at home.

How many women get to 30 weeks with no pregnancy symptoms, no movement and no bump?
That’s why I think it’s v unlikely she didn’t know she had an advanced pregnancy. The bigger problem here is that it’s possible for a woman to decide to have an illegal abortion and the hospital will facilitate it without checking it’s within the legal limit. In other words the legal limit isn’t being enforced.

Have to admit I'm not sure why the nhs is funding abortions unless we're talking a vulnerable woman.

You don't understand why the NHS is funding a medical procedure?

Meanwhile a 30 week old foetus, with a 90% chance of survival, has been killed. Surely it is medical negligence and in the interest of the public that this isn't allowed to happen again? 🤷‍♀️

It is undoubtedly a tragic case. Having read the article though, it isn't clear (to me) that she had obtained the pills by telemedicine/post?
I read it as she had gone to hospital to have a termination and was given the pills there. Went into labour and delivered a live but obviously very poorly baby. Tragically, despite the efforts of medical staff, the baby died as a result

I must say, I find it surprising that she thought she was only 12 weeks? I have only had one pregnancy but there is a massive difference between 12 and 30 weeks. Even if she didn't have a big bump, surely the movement at that stage would be a give away.

I think the issue here was caused by the chronic understaffing in the department. Even without a scan, a simple abdominal examination would have revealed that the pregnancy was beyond 12 weeks.

Meant to quote 'who do you want arrested' above.

@Lemonandlime123

Meanwhile a 30 week old foetus, with a 90% chance of survival, has been killed. Surely it is medical negligence and in the interest of the public that this isn't allowed to happen again? 🤷‍♀️

Which is why there’s an inquest happening.

Is this, an incredibly rare case, justification for denying thousands of women access to a service that is beneficial to them? No.

*a service the woman in the article posted wasn’t even using, at that.

Poor, poor baby :(

@Lemonandlime123

Meanwhile a 30 week old foetus, with a 90% chance of survival, has been killed. Surely it is medical negligence and in the interest of the public that this isn't allowed to happen again? 🤷‍♀️

Yes - its hideous and horrific, but one (possibly 2) in over 52 thousand.

In 2019, there were 25,945 seriously injured casualties in reported road traffic accidents so maybe we should ban roads?

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/922717/reported-road-casualties-annual-report-2019.pdf

@NorthSouthcatlady

But she wanted an abortion and she got an abortion? What is tragic about that? The hospital should have been more rigours with their checks

Tragic for the baby. Surely there would have have a more humane way of aborting a 30 week old fetus that this? I would assume that due to gestational age of the fetus, a 30 week old viable baby/fetus would feel pain and distress at this method of abortion therefore I would assume there would have been a different method used had they known how far along the pregnancy was.

This is terrible, but clearly states that the protocol does require a scan and that either protocol wasn't followed or something went wrong with the scan.

The fact that it has made the news shows how rare and noteworthy something like this is - as it should be.

How terrible for the poor patient.

I'm not sure why people are so certain that this is such a rare case. I understand that BPAS have been putting a lot of pressure on the media to not report these cases, which have been becoming increasingly common. So this could be why people are so ignorant of the actual situation.

Kevin Duffy, an independent health consultant and former director at Marie Stopes presented his findings gathered from a number of freedom of information requests on complications resulting from abortion pills taken at home.

Neither the Department of Health and Social Care or abortion providers have successfully captured all the data about events that have taken place after abortion pills have been posted. In the case of the DHSC, data collected on the safety of the policy is based solely on information submitted from HSA4 forms.

Between April and June 2020, out of 23,061 medical abortions, the DHSC recorded just one complication.

So after making freedom of information inquiries to the CQC and the NHS, it became evident that complications were much more common. The foi requests found that 6 hospitals had reported 69 complications following the taking of abortion pills – this is five times higher than the DHSC states!

The requests also found that an average of 36 calls per month were made to 999 emergency services following the taking of abortion pills, with an average of 20 ambulance responses per month.

Also, not that abortion providers do not consider surgical interventions for incomplete abortions a ‘complication’.

Between April and June 2020, 208 women were treated surgically in hospital for the removal of retained products of conception. But by their definition, this isn't a complication.

So no, complications are not rare.

That's just a completely irrelevant comparison, these two issues are in no way comparable.

I gave birth at York hospital, I was 1 week over term, having contractions every few minutes, they tried to get me to go back home but I was in too much pain. My baby was born 20 minutes later. She was nearly born in the corridor while the midwife was shouting "don't push, don't push".
It was not the best experience, they are lacking resources and the care is minimal.

This was in 2016 so way before the pandemic.