Telemedicine and Self-Managed Abortion

26 August 2020

Marge Berer has authored a discussion paper on ‘Telemedicine and Self-Managed Abortion’, which appears in the Newsletter of the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion.

From from the paper’s Introduction:

“Telemedicine for abortion care is the use of communications technology to arrange an abortion in a clinical setting or self-managed by the woman at home with medical abortion pills and for follow-up after the abortion. For International Safe Abortion Day, 28 September 2020, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion (ICWRSA) is promoting the use of telemedicine to arrange and follow-up an abortion and to support women’s right to have an abortion at home in the first trimester of pregnancy with medical abortion pills if she so chooses.
 
This discussion paper provides a history of how the use of telemedicine and self-managed abortion with abortion pills at home have developed. Initially, in Brazil in the 1980s, women shared information about the use of misoprostol informally. Then, feminist-run safe abortion information hotlines were set up, starting in 2005, to provide women with the information they need (and in some cases provide the pills) to have an abortion at home. There are currently one or more such hotlines in at least 26 countries in all world regions. More recently, health professionals began to use what is now called telemedicine (or telehealth) for this same purpose. This paper is about telemedicine and the conditions that make self-managed abortion safe, and gives examples of abortion services that put telemedicine and self-managed abortion together. It also covers the role pharmacies can and are playing in support of these changes.
 
Telemedicine and self-managed abortion may not be feasible, preferred, appropriate or safe in all instances. They may be restricted by law and regulations, limited communications technology, lack of skills in conducting telemedical consultations, and/or lack of crucial conditions for women to abort at home, such as privacy. For the last almost 40 years, however, medical abortion pills have made it possible for women to take abortion into their own hands, and they are doing so increasingly and in greater and greater numbers, with a little help from their friends, safe abortion information hotlines, and a growing number of health professionals.”

https://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/telemedicine-and-self-managed-abortion-a-discussion-paper/

 

Note on the Author

Marge Berer has been working in the UK and internationally since 1976 as an advocate for abortion rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights She has been the Coordinator of the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion since mid-2015. She founded and was the editor of the journal Reproductive Health Matters (October 1992–April 2015). She was a co-founder and Steering Committee chair of the International Consortium for Medical Abortion (2002–2011). She is active in Voice for Choice, the UK coalition of pro-choice organisations, and was its chair from 2007 to 2010. She was the first chairwoman of the Gender Advisory Panel, WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research, from 1996–2001, and a member of the International Women’s Advisory Panel of the International Planned Parenthood Federation from 1993–1998.