IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/medlaw/v30y2022i1p4-32..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Excessive Regulation of Early Abortion Medication in the UK: The Case for Reform

Author

Listed:
  • Elizabeth Chloe Romanis
  • Alexandra Mullock
  • Jordan A Parsons

Abstract

Early medical abortion (EMA) involves the administration of two medications—mifepristone and misoprostol—24–48 hours apart. These routinely used medications are recognised as safe and effective by the World Health Organization which recommends this combination of medications as a safe form of abortion until nine weeks’ gestation. Despite the safety and effectiveness of this drug regimen, there exists excessive regulation around EMA. This is despite new regulations introduced in Northern Ireland in 2020 and (temporary) changes made in 2020 to allow at-home administration of mifepristone in Great Britain (following earlier changes to permit home use of misoprostol). We argue that the excessive regulation of EMA is inappropriate because it fails to recognise that abortion is essential healthcare. Further, the regulation constitutes disproportionate interference with clinical discretion and service organisation because it is medically unnecessary and prevents abortion providers in the UK from adapting their service provision in line with emerging evidence of best practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Elizabeth Chloe Romanis & Alexandra Mullock & Jordan A Parsons, 2022. "The Excessive Regulation of Early Abortion Medication in the UK: The Case for Reform," Medical Law Review, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(1), pages 4-32.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:medlaw:v:30:y:2022:i:1:p:4-32.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/medlaw/fwab042
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:medlaw:v:30:y:2022:i:1:p:4-32.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/medlaw .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.