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. 

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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