Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how not collecting data, through the Abortion Notification System and hospital episode statistics, on complications arising from at-home medical abortions after the patient’s discharge from the care of the abortion service accords with the commitment to collect empirical data to improve women’s health outcomes outlined in the Women’s Health Strategy for England.

The Women’s Health Strategy sets out our ambitions to make better use of data already collected, and to address gaps in women’s health data to improve women’s health outcomes.

The Department routinely publishes data on abortion complications reported via the Abortion Notification System (ANS). The ANS collects information on complications that occur up until the time of discharge for all abortions, and where the medicine was administered for medical abortions.

The Department has published a one-time analysis exploring whether Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) can be used as a supplementary source for data on abortion complications. The HES data in the publication includes abortion complications arising from any abortion which resulted in an inpatient admission. The publication found that abortion complications are recorded differently in HES compared to the ANS and there are different strengths and limitations associated with using either data source. The Department has no plans to publish a separate annual report on abortion complications.