Sarah Roebotham - Marie Stopes International

Marie Stopes International says the research it published on Tuesday underlines the need to retain the current 24-week abortion limit.

 

ePolitix were at the press launch of the study and spoke to Sarah Roebotham, the research co-ordinator responsible for the research.

 

Question: What is Marie Stopes International (MSI)?

 

Sarah Roebotham: We are the UK’s leading provider of abortion services outside the NHS, seeing almost one third of all cases in England and Wales each year. We are a registered charity and a not for profit organisation.

 

Question: What were the key findings of the study?

 

Sarah Roebotham: The main findings were that women who present late for abortion generally are not aware of the pregnancy until well into the second trimester. There is a variety of reasons for this.

 

Some women did not get the signs or symptoms of pregnancy and others who did put it down to perhaps weight gain or missed periods.

 

We basically found that in many cases, presenting late for abortion was largely unavoidable. This means that lowering the legal limit is not the way forward. We do not believe that lowering the limit will lower the overall proportion of women having later abortions.

 

Question: What is a late abortion?

 

Sarah Roebotham: It is generally classified as an abortion that takes place after 20 weeks or more. 24 weeks is the upper legal limit in the UK and any abortions after that time are reserved for very extreme reasons.

 

Question: What is MSI’s position on late abortions?

 

Sarah Roebotham: We believe that women should continue to have access up to 24 weeks.

 

Question: You only interviewed 100 women which is a small sample. How much credence do the findings have?

 

Sarah Roebotham: I would have liked to have done a bigger study but we need to remember that it is a tiny proportion of women who are having late abortions and also that most women are very reluctant to speak about it.

 

I do think the findings are representative. I think I could have gone on for a very long time trying to find out why women got themselves into that unique and difficult situation.

 

Question: Why do most women have late abortions?

 

Sarah Roebotham: There are very many reasons. As I have said, some had no signs or symptoms of pregnancy. A minority were aware they were pregnant early on, but were either in denial or subsequently faced a significant change in circumstances that forced them to re-evaluate their pregnancy. Some suffered domestic violence, a lack of partner support or financial security.

 

Question: What are the medical grounds for lowering the abortion limit?

 

Sarah Roebotham: This is about the viability argument. Some people argue that developments in medicine can allow premature babies to be kept alive at earlier gestation than they might have been a few years ago. They argue that these medical advances mean we should look again at the current limit.

 

We argue that there is a difference between wanted and unwanted pregnancy.

 

Question: Talking about foetal viability is clearly one side of the issue, but do MSI believes the debate is not sufficiently centred on women?

 

Sarah Roebotham: Absolutely. All of the moves to lower the limit have been based around viability and advances in medicine. There has been no consideration of why a woman presents late for an abortion. We need to ask why women are having late abortions.

 

At today’s conference you have talked about discrepancies in services around the country. Do these divergences account for some of the late abortions?

 

Sarah Roebotham: There is a lot of difference in services across the UK and that is definitely something that needs to be addressed. The research showed us that in the NHS some women had to wait two weeks for consultation and maybe three weeks for the operation. Those waits are not acceptable when the woman is getting very close to that 20-week limit.

 

Question: What are your hopes for the future?

 

Sarah Roebotham: We need to start thinking of other ways to address this problem. Lowering the limit is not the way forward. We need to be thinking about educating women about contraception and the side effects of contraception. Women also need to be taught about the variability of symptoms between pregnancies and addressing the delays in the referral process.