Scotland’s department of public health has announced the highest abortion rate since records began in 1968, thanks to a jump in at-home chemical abortions.
In 2020, Scotland registered a record 13,815 abortions, which represents a rate of 13.4 abortions per thousand women aged 15 to 44, up from 13.2 the previous year, the Christian Institute reported Saturday.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Scotland adopted measures to facilitate at-home abortions, allowing an unsupervised chemical abortion within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy after just a phone or video consultation with a doctor or nurse.
Do-it-yourself chemical abortions entail ingesting two tablets, the Christian Institute noted, mifepristone to kill the developing baby and misoprostol to induce a miscarriage to expel the foetal remains from the womb.
Currently in Scotland, the vast majority of abortions – some 97 per cent – are performed in this manner. The number increased dramatically during the pandemic and in 2020, misoprostol was taken at home in nearly 80 per cent of chemical abortions, a leap of more than 28 per cent over the previous year.
Despite the spike in DIY abortions across Britain, seven in ten people in England report concerns over the unsupervised practice, according to an opinion poll conducted by Savanta ComRes for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) and made public in February.
Moreover, the majority of GPs (57 per cent) say they are concerned about women having a medical abortion at home after a phone or video consultation with a doctor, and only 37 per cent say they are unconcerned at the prospect.
The Christian Institute noted that Dr Calum MacKellar of the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics has written that at-home chemical abortions show a disregard for human dignity, in particular the practice of discarding the baby’s remains as “worthless waste”.
In a clinic, an aborted child’s body is supposed to be treated with some level of respect, as they are typically placed in a box, taken to a mortuary and cremated, MacKellar stated. In the case of home abortions, the remains are usually “flushed down the toilet or discarded as waste in another manner,” he lamented.