NICE Publishes Abortion Care Quality Standard

12 February 2021

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published an abortion care quality standard, which sets out priorities to improve the care offered by abortion services, on 26 January 2021.

The standard has six statements aimed at service providers, commissioners, health, public health and social care practitioners and the public. It focuses on a number of priority areas including making abortion services easy to access and offering women the option to have early medical abortion at home.

  • Statement 1 – Healthcare commissioners and providers work together to make abortion services easy to access.
  • Statement 2 – Women who request an abortion are given a choice between medical and surgical abortion to take place up to and including  23+6 weeks’ gestation.
  • Statement 3 – Women who decide to go ahead with an abortion have the option to have the procedure within 1 week of assessment.
  • Statement 4 – Women having a medical abortion up to and including 9+6  weeks’ gestation are given the option to take misoprostol at home.
  • Statement 5 – Women having an abortion who want contraception receive their chosen method before discharge, either at the time of their abortion or as soon as possible after expulsion of the pregnancy.
  • Statement 6 – Women having an abortion are given advice on how to access care and support after the abortion.

NICE’s full abortion care quality standard is available here: www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs199

NB. For simplicity of language the quality standard uses the term women throughout, but this should be taken to also include people who do not identify as women but who are pregnant.