21 juni 2023
During the pandemic, thousands of British women were sent abortion pills after receiving telephone consultation. This form of Telemedicine is dangerous and should remain forbidden in The Netherlands.
Last week, Corinne Ellemeet, Member of Parliament for the Dutch green party GroenLinks, showed her abhorrence and condemnation of the sentencing of British Carla Foster (44) on Twitter. Foster underwent a so-called DIY (do it yourself) abortion at home by using abortion pills. People who did not read the article she included in her tweet, may have thought the judge made a mistake sentencing Foster to 14 months prison: Ellemeet suggested that Foster’s only crime was having taken the pills beyond the medically advised ten weeks. In reality, Foster had an illegal abortion at 32 weeks of pregnancy, well past the 24 weeks limit.
No ultrasound
The British woman made use of Telemedicine, which was implemented in the UK in early 2020, in response to the covid-lockdowns. With Telemedicine, the patient is no longer required to come in for a physical exam, but only receives consultation via a telephone or video conversation. Thus, thousands of women and girls in the UK were able to receive abortion pills during the covid-pandemic by mail, after which they underwent full DIY-abortions. Carla Foster was one of them. During her telephone consultation, she told the clinic that she was pregnant for no longer than seven weeks, thus making sure she would receive the pills.
The situation has unmasked one of the biggest disadvantages of telemedicine: without an ultrasound, which is part of the usual procedure, a doctor cannot ascertain how far along a pregnancy is. Abortion pills can only be prescribed until 10 weeks pregnancy. In Foster’s case, things took a turn for the worse. She was forced to call an ambulance. After she arrived at the hospital, she went into labour and had a stillborn child. The hospital staff informed the police, who found search terms on her computer on how to terminate a pregnancy after 24 weeks and how to hide a pregnant belly. In court, Foster pleaded guilty and admitted being plagued by remorse and by the haunting memory of her child’s face.
Not only an incident
Experiences with Telemedicine in countries like Ireland and England, provide a useful insight into the risks of this form of care. The BBC, for example, shared the sad story of “Savannah”, a sixteen year old girl who was rushed to hospital with severe hemorrhage. Unfortunately, Carla’s and Savanna’s stories are not merely incidents. Research shows revealed that in 2020 alone, thousands of girls and women had to visit the hospital after a DIY-abortion. Despite these numbers, abortion clinics in the UK successfully pushed for the standardization of telemedical abortion treatment, as the Dutch organization Women on Waves, who invented this method, calls it.
Voluntarily?
Another danger of Telemedicine is that an abortion doctor can hardly assess whether an abortion choice was made without coercion. After all, there is no way to know whether an angry partner or father is secretly present during a remote consultation. The reality of this problem was exposed by the undercover work of Kevin Duffy and his team. Once the director of a British abortion clinic himself, he is now active within the Pro-Life movement. His team members pretended to be patients, after which they received the abortion pills at home, even though they had lied about their names, birthdates and the duration of their pregnancy.
Extreme abortion limit
In her reaction, Dutch PM Corinne Ellemeet, herself a vocal advocate of Telemedicine, did not mention the dangers for women using Telemedicine. Neither did she mention the death of the child, that has potentially suffered pain. In fact, even abortion activists have always stressed that most contemporary neuroscientists believe that a fetus can experience pain after 24 to 26 weeks of pregnancy. Yet, Ellemeet only seemed willing to pay attention to Foster’s being sentenced to prison. She called the sentence ‘mercilessly harsh’. Meanwhile, she used it for her campaign to repeal out of Dutch penal law (Article 296 says that whoever executes an abortion is punishable, unless it was done in a clinic or hospital with the right permit). After all, Foster’s sentencing is based on a similar UK law. Ellemeet’s is an estranging attitude, since anyone viewing this post can read that the pregnancy was well beyond the 24-week limit?
Her response to the death of a viable and healthy child confirms what has long been clear for whoever has followed the debate on abortion: ‘my body, my choice’ doesn’t just stop being true mid-pregnancy, according to many feminists. A woman’s bodily autonomy is absolute when it comes to her pregnancy, and should therefore be in effect for its entire duration. It is in moments like these that right-wing, liberal proponents of abortion rights should speak up, as they do not usually have the desire to stretch the accessibility of abortion to such extreme lengths.
Who is to blame?
At the start of the pandemic, Dutch abortion activists tried to get telemedical abortion implemented in the Netherlands as well. Bureau Clara Wichmann sued the Dutch State in order to achieve this, receiving moral support from Liliane Ploumen (Member of Parliament for the Dutch Labour party) and the organization Women on Waves. Their demand was denied on April 10, 2020 because Dutch abortion clinics were against using Telemedics, contrary to UK abortion clinics. Moreover, the court ruling contains an interesting warning by the Federation of Dutch Co-operating Abortion Clinics (StiSAN) and the Dutch Fellowship of Abortion Doctors (NGvA). They expressed a fear of what would later become true for thousands of British women and girls: prescribing abortion pills after 10 weeks of pregnancy can have far reaching medical consequences for the women using them, including the need for hospital care.
This makes it all the more puzzling that proponents of Telemedicine are now arguing that the illegality of abortion after 24 weeks is is the problem in this matter. Surely, the entire incident is intensely sad with loss all around. But no one can deny that Carla Foster will not be able to see her children for a long time because of the disastrous decision to legalise Telemedicine.
This is an article by Diederik van Dijk and Chris Develing. The authors respectively work as director and policy advisor for the Dutch organisation NPV – Zorg voor het Leven.
The article was published in Reformatorisch Dagblad on 16 June, 2023.
