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Alliance for Choice

Free, Safe, Legal, Local Abortion For Everyone Who Needs It

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AfC statement on South Eastern Trust closure of services

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As of this morning, Tuesday 5th January, there is no longer an Early Medical Abortion service available through the South Eastern Trust. After only just reinstating services at the Northern Trust yesterday, Alliance for Choice are dismayed that we continue to have potluck abortion services in Northern Ireland and that each Trust’s provision remains utterly precarious. Without proper commissioning and resources this will continue.

Read more

tags: abortion pro choice, pro choice, health minister, Robin Swann, SOSNI, regulations, telemedicine
categories: Provision
Tuesday 01.05.21
Posted by Emma Campbell
 

Open Letter to Robin Swann, Health Minister for Northern Ireland

 
 

The undersigned call on the Northern Ireland Health Minister, Robin Swann, to implement abortion care recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) immediately. This would make provision for abortion telemedicine across Northern Ireland, similar to those commissioned in Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland since March 2020. Since the beginning of the outbreak WHO recommended that services related to reproductive health are considered part of essential services during COVID-19. In June 2020, WHO recommended that abortion provision in the global pandemic should; 

Minimise facility visits and provider–client contacts through the use of telemedicine and self-management approaches, when applicable, ensuring access to a trained provider if needed. (World Health Organization (1 June 2020) 2.1.4 Sexual and reproductive health services, Maintaining essential health services: operational guidance for the COVID-19 context, Interim guidance (pp. 29))

Abortion telemedicine has been available throughout all of the UK and Ireland since the onset of the pandemic yet Northern Ireland remains the only place where a safe, cost effective and practical method of abortion care has been denied to individuals seeking abortions. 

Additionally, the Department of Health has been legally mandated to commission Trust-wide early medical abortion services up to 12 weeks on request and abortions for health and mental health reasons with no conditionality up to 24 weeks gestation from April 1st, yet nothing has been done. In the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic, women and pregnant people who need abortions should not be forced to make unnecessary journeys of any sort, either within Northern Ireland or to England. 

On Monday 5th October 2020, the Northern Health Trust reluctantly advised they are no longer in a position to provide early medical abortions due to lack of resources. This was as a direct result of a failure of the Department of Health to commission or fund ANY services. This is just as the confirmed cases of COVID-19 have surged in that same Trust, with risk of contagion amongst the highest across the UK and Ireland. The blocking of EMA services and a complete lack of telemedicine as a result of the DoH inaction, means those seeking abortions will have to travel to GB, which directly contravenes WHO guidance, placing service users and healthcare workers at increased risk of COVID-19 and adding unnecessary cost and pressure to NHS services.

Since April 2020, over 150 women and pregnant people from Northern Ireland have had to use the Central Booking system of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and have been forced to travel to GB in order to access the care they require, more have used Women on Web and Women Help Women services when a straightforward pathway was unavailable to them. 

Abortion telemedicine is required in Northern Ireland as a matter of urgency to ensure that those women and pregnant people who require abortion healthcare are placed at no additional risk from being unable to access the services they require or being forced to travel in order to do so. 

We call for the Department of Health, led by the Northern Ireland Health Minister to make this provision without any further delay and to stop blocking resources to abortion services by his refusal to commission services within the Health and Social Care Trusts. 

------------------------

Signed by:

  1. Abortion Rights UK

  2. Abortion Support Network

  3. Alliance for Choice Belfast

  4. Alliance for Choice Derry

  5. Alliance for Choice Mid-Ulster

  6. Amnesty International UK (NI)

  7. Atlas Womens Centre

  8. Belfast Cleaning Society

  9. Belfast District Trades Council

  10. Belfast Feminist Network

  11. Brook Young People

  12. Christina Nelson, Actor/Director

  13. Colm Eastwood MP & Party Leader SDLP

  14. Communist Party of Ireland

  15. Common Youth

  16. Cllr Connie Egan, Alliance Party Councillor for Bangor West

  17. Craigavon & District Trades Council

  18. Claire Bailey MLA Green Party

  19. DCSDC Cllr Rachael Ferguson (Alliance)

  20. DCSDC Cllr Shaun Harkin (PBP)

  21. DCSDC Cllr Eamonn McCann (PBP)

  22. Dr. Máirtín O'Catháin, University of Central Lancashire

  23. Dr Yassin M. Brunger QUB

  24. Doctors for Choice NI

  25. Doctors for Choice UK

  26. Elizabeth Nelson Ulster University

  27. Emma Sheerin MLA Sinn Fein

  28. End Deportations Belfast

  29. Falls Women Centre

  30. Gerry Caroll MLA PBP

  31. GMB Northern West

  32. GMB Irish Region 

  33. Here NI

  34. Humanists UK

  35. ICNI - Informing Choices Northern Ireland

  36. International Campaign for Women’s Safe Right to Abortion

  37. LadyGeek - Geek Web Design

  38. Lawyers for Choice (UK) 

  39. London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign

  40. Marie Stopes UK

  41. Matthew O'Toole MLA

  42. MyBodyMyLife

  43. NIC-ICTU - Irish Congress of Trade Unions - Northern Ireland Committee

  44. NIC-ICTU Health Committee

  45. NIC_ICTU Women’s Committee

  46. NIPSA - Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance

  47. NIRWN - Northern Ireland Rural Women’s Network

  48. Northern Ireland Refugee and Asylum Seekers Women Association (BOMOKO NI)

  49. North West Migrants Forum

  50. NUS-USI - National Union of Students - Union of Students Ireland

  51. Dr Pam Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Aston University

  52. Paula Bradshaw MLA Alliance Party

  53. People Before Profit

  54. Project Choice Queen’s University Belfast Students Union

  55. Queen’s University Belfast Gender Network

  56. Rachel Woods MLA Green Party

  57. Rape Crisis NI 

  58. RCM - The Royal College of Midwives

  59. Reclaim the Night Belfast

  60. Sinéad McLaughlin MLA SDLP

  61. Sinn Fein

  62. Sister Supporter

  63. Stephen Farry MP Alliance Party

  64. Strabane Pro Choice

  65. Trademark

  66. TransgenderNI

  67. The Belfast and District Trades Union Council

  68. The Centre for Gender in Politics

  69. The Rainbow Project

  70. Unite

  71. UNSION ORCHARD BRANCH

  72. Ulster University Pro-Choice Society

  73. Womens Centre Derry

  74. Women's Support Network WSN

  75. WRDA - Women’s Resource and Development Agency

  76. WPG - Women’s Policy Group

tags: coalition, civic society, telemedicine, WHO, covid-19
categories: Provision
Wednesday 10.21.20
Posted by Emma Campbell
 

Activists across the island call for emergency measures to include abortion telemedicine

Across the Island of Ireland, we are coming to terms with social distancing, and the huge additional burden that will be placed on our healthcare systems due to the virus. In hope of easing that burden, while also ensuring everybody can access the healthcare they require - we want to highlight the option of telemedicine abortions. Legislation to allow telemedicine and home use of both abortion medicines needs urgent consideration before our health services come under severe pressure.

Read more

tags: telemedicine, pills, abortion pills, abortion rights, Ireland, Northern Ireland
categories: Provision, Legislation, Campaigning
Wednesday 03.18.20
Posted by Emma Campbell
 
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