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.

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Signed by:

Abortion Rights UK
Abortion Support Network
Alliance for Choice Belfast
Alliance for Choice Derry
Alliance for Choice Mid-Ulster
Amnesty International UK (NI)
Atlas Womens Centre
Belfast Cleaning Society
Belfast District Trades Council
Belfast Feminist Network
Brook Young People
Christina Nelson, Actor/Director
Colm Eastwood MP & Party Leader SDLP
Communist Party of Ireland
Common Youth
Cllr Connie Egan, Alliance Party Councillor for Bangor West
Craigavon & District Trades Council
Claire Bailey MLA Green Party
DCSDC Cllr Rachael Ferguson (Alliance)
DCSDC Cllr Shaun Harkin (PBP)
DCSDC Cllr Eamonn McCann (PBP)
Dr. Máirtín O'Catháin, University of Central Lancashire
Dr Yassin M. Brunger QUB
Doctors for Choice NI
Doctors for Choice UK
Elizabeth Nelson Ulster University
Emma Sheerin MLA Sinn Fein
End Deportations Belfast
Falls Women Centre
Gerry Caroll MLA PBP
GMB Northern West
GMB Irish Region
Here NI
Humanists UK
ICNI - Informing Choices Northern Ireland
International Campaign for Women’s Safe Right to Abortion
LadyGeek - Geek Web Design
Lawyers for Choice (UK)
London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign
Marie Stopes UK
Matthew O'Toole MLA
MyBodyMyLife
NIC-ICTU - Irish Congress of Trade Unions - Northern Ireland Committee
NIC-ICTU Health Committee
NIC_ICTU Women’s Committee
NIPSA - Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance
NIRWN - Northern Ireland Rural Women’s Network
Northern Ireland Refugee and Asylum Seekers Women Association (BOMOKO NI)
North West Migrants Forum
NUS-USI - National Union of Students - Union of Students Ireland
Dr Pam Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Aston University
Paula Bradshaw MLA Alliance Party
People Before Profit
Project Choice Queen’s University Belfast Students Union
Queen’s University Belfast Gender Network
Rachel Woods MLA Green Party
Rape Crisis NI
RCM - The Royal College of Midwives
Reclaim the Night Belfast
Sinéad McLaughlin MLA SDLP
Sinn Fein
Sister Supporter
Stephen Farry MP Alliance Party
Strabane Pro Choice
Trademark
TransgenderNI
The Belfast and District Trades Union Council
The Centre for Gender in Politics
The Rainbow Project
Unite
UNSION ORCHARD BRANCH
Ulster University Pro-Choice Society
Womens Centre Derry
Women's Support Network WSN
WRDA - Women’s Resource and Development Agency
WPG - Women’s Policy Group