Campaigners are calling for an end to the “pills by post” scheme that allows people to conduct abortions at home, without medical supervision.
It follows alarming cases in which the scheme was used to abort a child beyond the legal limit and in which a woman was deceived into aborting her child by her partner without her consent.
Right To Life UK has said there should be a “full inquiry” into the actions of MSI Reproductive Choices after jurors in the trial of a 45-year-old woman heard that she had procured abortion pills from the charity and then allegedly used them to illegally abort her baby at 26 weeks' gestation.
In Britain, the legal limit at which an abortion can be carried out is 24 weeks. For at-home abortions, the limit is 10 weeks.
Under the scheme, women are able to terminate their babies without an in-person consultation and without medical supervision.
Prior to the scheme, women seeking an abortion were required to have an in-person consultation with a medical professional before taking the abortion pills under supervision at a clinic.
Right To Life said that if MSI had been required to have an in-person consultation and examination, it would have known that the pregnancy being terminated by the woman on trial was well beyond the legal limit.
Right to Life also raised the case of Stuart Worby, who was sentence to 12 years in prison after using a “pills by post scheme” to obtain abortion pills to spike the drink of a woman who was 15 weeks pregnant.
The unnamed victim lost her baby and since the ordeal has been unable to conceive. In a victim impact statement she said, “The only baby that I could have had was the one I lost.”
Last year 52 MPs from across the political spectrum proposed an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill that would put an end to the at-home abortion scheme.
Catherine Robinson, a spokesperson for Right To Life UK, called on the government "to immediately end the ‘pills by post’ at-home abortion scheme".
