UK to encourage 'lunch-hour' abortion visits, despite known pressure tactics

The United Kingdom (UK) announced that it plans to fund more "lunch-hour" abortions in an attempt to "remove barriers" to abortion.

Key Takeaways:

• The UK will be changing how it pays for women's abortions through the National Health Service (NHS).

• Rather than paying for each part of an abortion (consultation, scan, procedure) separately, it will be offering a bundled payment.

• It is an effort to incentivize same-day abortion appointments.

The Details:

According to the Renewed Women's Health Strategy for England, released by the Department of Health and Social Care this month, the government is "changing the NHS Payment Scheme to remove financial disincentives to provision of timely abortion care. This makes clear that prices paid should not discourage the delivery of consultations, scans and procedures on the same day..." (emphasis added)

According to Right to Life UK, the NHS, which is the UK's publicly funded health care system, has historically paid for each step of the abortion process separately, including the initial consultation, the scan, and the abortion procedure itself. This system incentivized abortion facilities to likewise schedule each part of the abortion process separately.

The new plan would enable abortion facilities to receive a bundled payment for all of the abortion procedure steps to encourage "same day" abortions.

The change in the payment scheme would "financially incentivize the UK’s largest private abortion providers, BPAS, MSI Reproductive Choices, and NUPAS, which are paid to provide most of the abortions provided through the NHS, to rush women into abortions with 'same day' or 'lunch-hour' abortions," said Right to Life UK.

This also means that women will no longer receive additional time to consider their other options after their abortion consultation.

Right to Life UK Spokesperson Catherine Robinson explained:

Women facing an unplanned pregnancy need time, care and support, not a system that gives abortion clinics a financial incentive to rush them through consultations, scans and abortions on the same day.

This change is part of much wider major plans of the Labour Government to further expand and liberalize abortion provision, which would likely lead to more lives being ended by abortion here in the UK.

Under the current NHS Payment Scheme, abortion clinics are typically paid separately for each part of the abortion pathway – the consultation, scan and procedure. This encourages abortion providers not to rush the process in one day, and also gives women more time to consider their decision before the actual abortion procedure happens.

A spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care disputed this, saying, "This is completely false. These changes are about removing barriers that can delay care and putting women in control."

Zoom Out:

The term "lunch hour abortion" was coined in the 1990s, when Marie Stopes International began advertising "lunch hour" abortions with "walk-in, walk-out" abortion facilities that offered quick, 10-minute abortions for women less than 12 weeks pregnant.

The women were given time to "compose themselves" before going back to work, according to Marie Stopes. It said the goal was to help in "demystifying abortion by removing unnecessary clinical trappings," and "encouraging women faced with unwanted pregnancies to act quickly to avoid the emotional and physical trauma associated with later term abortions." (emphasis added)

Abortion facilities have often been accused of rushing women through abortion appointments like "cattle," and abortion has been sold to women as though it were part of a going-out-of-business sale, pressuring women to undergo an abortion by a certain time before the cost increases.

In addition, Right to Life UK reported that the Care Quality Commission found that "MSI Reproductive Choices [formerly Marie Stopes International] were paying staff bonuses for encouraging women to undergo abortions."

According to the organization, "At all 70 Marie Stopes clinics, inspectors found evidence of a policy that saw staff utilise a high-pressure sales tactic, calling women who had decided against having an abortion to offer them another appointment.

"In what was described as a 'cattle market culture', staff felt 'encouraged' to ensure women went through with abortions. Staff described this as a 'very target-driven culture'."

The Bottom Line:

This change in NHS abortion payments comes just weeks before the "abortion up to birth" clause added to the Crime Policing Bill becomes law. The combination of these two major abortion related changes signals that the UK government is eager to expand abortion access.