In England during 2021, at least 3,900 women were admitted to an NHS hospital for surgical treatment of complications arising from abortion.
On 23 November 2023, the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities (OHID), part of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), published new official statistics reporting the rate of complications arising from abortions in England. You can find further details in my earlier post: ‘Abortion complications – new official statistics’.
The OHID reports that in 2021, the rate of hospital admissions to treat complications arising from an incomplete abortion was 19.3 for every 1,000 abortions performed in England for residents. Government data shows that were 203,662 abortions in England that year.[i]
Meaning that as many as 3,931[ii] women were admitted to an NHS hospital in England for a surgical evacuation of retained products of conception (ERPC) resulting from an incomplete abortion.
If we assume that an abortion provider, being careful to ensure the medical safety of their work, would not discharge a woman from their facility until the abortion procedure was complete, then we can conclude that these hospital admissions were for women who had self-managed their abortions at home. These self-managed abortions account for ~70% of all abortions in England, at least 140,000 in 2021.[iii]
If the above holds true, then the rate of hospital admissions for surgical ERPC following an abortion at home is 2.8%, a rate similar to that found in our FOI investigation.
We first wrote about the need for the government to use abortion complications data from NHS Hospitals on 22 Feb 2021 when we said: “It would be simple for the DHSC to gather these data from NHS Hospitals… alongside the data on the HSA4 forms… when it is considering the safety and effectiveness of medical abortion at home.”
We welcome this government report, it is a significant step towards ensuring more complete reporting of all complications arising from abortion, and starts to address the questions asked in parliament by Lord Jackson and others.
The OHID should now turn its attention to gathering and reporting data for those women who are treated as outpatients at an NHS A&E department.
[i] Tab 10a in the spreadsheet ‘Abortion statistics 2021: data tables (revision)’ accessed from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2021 on 28 November 2023.
[ii] (203,662/1,000) x 19.3 = 3,931
[iii] Tab ‘T2’ in the spreadsheet ‘Abortion statistics 2021: additional tables (revision)’, accessed from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2021 on 28 November 2023.
Percuity 