Hundreds of thousands of pregnant women face a crisis as maternity and abortion services shut their doors because of the coronavirus outbreak.
One MP this weekend warned that pregnant women were being treated like “second-class citizens” with the closure of NHS services and a lack of government guidance for those in need of urgent care.
The NHS faces a severe shortage of midwives with the number of unstaffed positions doubling to one in five since the virus arrived in Britain. A fifth (22%) of senior midwives said their local maternity units had shut indefinitely because of staff self-isolating or being deployed elsewhere.
In several hospitals, pregnant women have been told they are not allowed to have their partner or family present for support before or after giving birth.
St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, imposed a ban to try to halt the spread of the virus last week, issuing guidance that states: “No one, not even the partner, will be admitted to the antenatal or postnatal wards to minimise risk to babies, mothers and staff.” Women have also been told to attend ultrasound scans alone.
A majority (78%) of staff polled by the Royal College of Midwives last week reported that routine face-to-face antenatal and postnatal appointments had ended.
The closure of birth centres and midwifery units comes as Edward Morris, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, warned that abortion services were on the “brink of collapse”, with women trying to buy illegal pills online.
By law, women ending a pregnancy early must take a pill at a clinic under the supervision of two doctors. Last week the Department of Health issued and then withdrew guidance suspending those rules. The change would have allowed women to have medication sent to their homes after a consultation by phone or online.
Morris is one of 50 experts who today call on Matt Hancock, the health secretary, to reverse the decision. “As the pandemic is predicted to reach its peak, at least 44,000 women will have to leave their homes needlessly to access early medical abortion care with . . . clinic closures forcing them to travel long distances across the country, exposing themselves and others to the virus,” they state in a letter to The Sunday Times.
There are about 700,000 births a year and 200,000 abortions, suggesting that 234,000 women could be affected in the next 13 weeks.
The British Pregnancy Advice Service, the largest provider of NHS abortions, said it had closed 20 clinics and cancelled 1,120 appointments due last week.
BPAS also warned of devastating consequences for girls and young women who have not informed their parents that they are pregnant — and those in abusive relationships who could become victims of forced pregnancies.
As the number of UK coronavirus deaths reached 1,019, or one death every six minutes:
● Britain’s most senior midwife called on maternity services to be ringfenced during the crisis to ensure women get “safe care”
● World on Web, a service for women in countries where there is no legal access to medical abortion, said that it was opening its abortion pill service to all UK women for the first time
● West Suffolk Hospital, which is in Hancock’s own constituency, became one of 15 NHS trusts to ask the abortion charity, Marie Stopes, with help delivering services
● Eleven midwife-led units, for women with low-risk pregnancies, said they had been closed to provide extra facilities to treat Covid-19 patients.
Last night, Gill Walton, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, said: “While other areas of the health service can postpone and cancel procedures, there is still an ongoing need for maternity services. Women are still pregnant, still having babies, and they need the care and support of properly resourced maternity services.
“We have to ensure that midwives and maternity support workers are ringfenced from any redeployment to ensure that women continue to receive safe care.”
Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow in London, said: “Women are being treated as second class citizens and left in the lurch.” She added: “The idea that we can simply forget about women’s healthcare needs for the duration of this crisis has to end now.”