New guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) could lead to more women choosing to have an abortion, pro-life campaigners have warned.
The Right to Life campaign group fears that guidelines released this month will "rush" women through the abortion process while at the same time reducing the amount of support available, and threatening the right of health professionals to act according to their conscience.
The recommendations from NICE say that women should be allowed to "self-refer" for abortions and that health professionals must "ensure minimum delay in the abortion process".
The guidance says that the process should "avoid the need" for women to return to their GP for referral or "repeated assessments or investigations".
It also suggests that face-to-face abortion consultations with a GP or health professional be replaced with phone or "telemed" consultations.
Similarly, NICE recommends that in person follow-up appointments between GPs and women who have had an abortion at home be replaced with "telephone or text messaging".
"Commissioners and providers should allow women to self-refer to abortion services," the guidance states.
"Healthcare professionals should not allow their personal beliefs to delay access to abortion services."
Other recommendations suggest that abortion services be expanded from the current list of registered hospitals and clinics to a far wider range of settings "in the community".
NICE also calls for an increase in funding for travel and accommodation to make abortion possible for women who have to travel.
Right to Life questioned why funding should be made available to enable abortions but none to support women who wish to continue with their pregnancies.
It voiced further concerns that the recommendations would reduce the time that women have to reflect on their decision and consider other options.
Spokesperson for Right to Life, Catherine Robinson said: "The recommendations in these guidelines from NICE will rush women through the abortion process and provide less medical supervision and support for women.
"In 2018, in the UK 205,292 babies in the womb were aborted. These recommended changes could mean less time for women to explore options other than abortion and see our already very high abortion rate increase even further."
A ComRes poll found that 79% of people in the UK support the introduction of consideration periods to ensure that pregnant women considering an abortion have enough time to consider all their options.
Ms Robinson continued: "The guidelines should address the reasons women seek out abortion services in such high numbers in this country, often because of; vulnerability, isolation, lack of financial or emotional support, or pressure from a partner.
"Simply rushing women through the abortion process does nothing to address the problems these women already face and would only later compound these issues if coupled with post-abortion regret.
"This is a reckless approach to healthcare. Women's safety and mental or physical health should never be potentially compromised for the sake of expediency or convenience."
Dr Callum Miller, medical doctor and research associate at the University of Oxford, said that self-referral and self-administration were "not an improvement" in health services for women.
"Clearly, the absence of medical supervision for taking powerful drugs, often with great distress, is not an improvement in medical care," he continued.
"The guidance states that there is no routine follow-up necessary for women following an abortion procedure. This is especially concerning given what appears to be a drive to encourage out-of-clinic use of misoprostol where women will pass the fetus either at home or at another non-clinical location.
"Mental health reviews have repeatedly stressed the need for screening for those at risk of negative mental health consequences from abortion, and it is disappointing to see that such women are not offered psychological follow up after such a traumatic event which appears to be associated with worse mental health outcomes."
