Government has no plans to report on all abortion complications

The Government recently published new statistics showing that many thousands of women are being treated for abortion complications at NHS hospitals. In its report, the Department noted that these complications were not being reported by the independent abortion providers such as BPAS and MSI Reproductive Choices, and yet there are no plans to make this an integral part of the government’s annual reporting of abortion statistics.

In October, from parliamentary questions asked by Lord Jackson, we learned:

• The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is fully aware that independent sector abortion providers, including BPAS and MSI Reproductive Choices, are not reporting all complications arising from at-home medical abortions.
• The Department knows that some women present at NHS hospitals for treatment of complications arising from failed and incomplete medical abortions and that these cases are recorded in systems such as Hospital Episodes Statistics.
• The DHSC acknowledges the need to improve the quality of data available on abortion complications and has established a project to improve its understanding of these data.

That project culminated in a report and new statistics published on 23 November 2023 by the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities (OHID), part of the DHSC. This report only included the cases in which women were admitted as an inpatient, typically for an evacuation of retained products of conception (ERPC) but did not include any treatments provide to women who presented with abortion complications in A&E or any other outpatient department. Notwithstanding the incompleteness of this new set of data, it is remarkable that the Hospital reported rate of abortion complications is almost twelve times higher than that being reported by the abortion providers.

Our analysis of these new hospital statistics showed that the rate of hospital admissions for surgical ERPC, to treat complications following a medical abortion at home, is 2.8%, a rate similar to that found in our FOI investigation.

This new OHID report, using hospital data, is a significant first step towards ensuring a more complete reporting of all abortion complications. On 28 November, Lord Jackson tabled two parliamentary questions:

• The first asking if the OHID would be instructed to “regularly and expeditiously report the Hospital Episode Statistics on abortion complications that are treated on an outpatient basis at NHS A&E departments.”
• And secondly asking if the Government would ensure that this new reporting on abortion complications being treated at NHS Hospitals “is made part of [OHID’s] routine annual reporting of abortion statistics in England and Wales.”

On 14 December 2023, Lord Markham (The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care) responded:

The recent release of statistics comparing data from the Department’s Abortion Notification System and the Hospital Episode Statistics was an ad hoc official statistics in development publication, formerly known as experimental statistics. There are currently no plans to issue a similar publication annually.

This is an unacceptable response. Now that OHID has shown that it is able to report abortion complications data from NHS Hospitals, and that the numbers of women being treated are significant, thousands per year, surely the Government should mandate such reporting on an annual basis?