In my last article I described some of the abortion methods that are currently used and that are now legal in New Zealand, following the law change in 2020. But there was one development I didn't mention: the do-it-yourself, or ‘telehealth’, abortion.
This arrangement was introduced in the UK in 2020 so that women could access abortions without contravening ‘pandemic’ regulations. Previously an early medical abortion required at least one doctor’s visit and the pills had to be taken at a licensed clinic. This meant that the doctor could ascertain gestational age, assess the woman’s health and look for signs that she was being coerced. In the supposed ‘emergency’ situation of 2020, this became too ‘unsafe’ and the priority shifted to simply making sure that any woman could get an abortion at the earliest possible time, without any concern for contraindications. Readers will probably remember how well this fitted with the whole bizarre atmosphere of that episode in history, when we found ourselves being treated as bodies without souls: as valueless and purposeless beings whose only duty was to keep themselves alive for some unexplained reason.
The UK emergency law was to expire in two years, but instead it was made permanent in 2022. By 2022, the idea of changing things back to what they had been suddenly became “retrogressive” and “political”. According to the website of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, “[r]evoking telemedicine would have placed the safety of vulnerable women and girls at risk, for entirely political purposes,” and would “legally compel all women to attend an in-person appointment…for no clinical reason.”
New Zealand closely followed the UK: at home abortion became technically legal with the 2020 law change, and two years later the government launched the National Abortion Telehealth Service, or “DECIDE”, to ensure that women anywhere in the country could have an abortion without having to travel to a clinic. Actually, you don’t even have to be a woman to benefit from this: according to DECIDE’s website, their services are available to “any pregnant person”.
The unspoken assumption here is that women always want to have an abortion, and that the shadowy abusers in the background will be trying to stop them. Dial-an-abortion can be done in secret and so protects the vulnerable from abuse. But this is not accurate: opinion polls show more women than men to be opposed to abortion, and surveys have found that around a third of women accessing abortion have been coerced to do so. The ‘telehealth’ service adds another layer of possible abuse – it would be easy enough for another party to get the pills delivered, and then coerce or drug or deceive the pregnant woman into taking them. One would have to be extremely sheltered or naive to imagine that such things could not happen.
And are we reassured by the information that this procedure is ‘safe and effective’? All medical interventions have risks and side effects, which is why society has seen a need to licence doctors and medical premises and confine medical treatment to these places. And, yes, women do suffer complications, sometimes severe complications, from taking these pills. Sooner or later we will have to face the fact that legalised abortion has now led to the very thing that legalised abortion was supposed to prevent – women going through dangerous and harmful procedures without medical support or supervision. Let me say that again, more forcefully: we have been told for years that we needed ‘safe, legal’ abortion so that women would not be exposed to the risk of injury or death through dangerous ‘backstreet’ abortions. Now that very thing is happening, legally. And now we’re being told that it’s ‘safe’.
