Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has plans to review their guidelines on foetal pain.
There is currently no plan for the Department to review the guidelines on foetal pain.
The Department does not set clinical practice. It is for clinicians to determine whether it is appropriate to provide fetal pain relief. To support clinical practice, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has considered the issue of fetal pain and awareness in its guidelines on ‘The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion and Fetal Awareness: Review of Research and Recommendations for Practice’, which can be viewed online at the following link:
https://www.rcog.org.uk/globalassets/documents/guidelines/abortion-guideline_web_1.pdf
https://www.rcog.org.uk/globalassets/documents/guidelines/rcogfetalawarenesswpr0610.pdf