Dr. Patricia Lohr:

There is potential ability to have nurse-led services in particular for medical abortions. In the UK, a doctor must always sign the prescription for the medical abortion drugs, for example, and they must always authorise the abortion. Those medications can then be delivered by a nurse and peri-abortion management can be done by a nurse in our setting. It is a more affordable model of care than utilising doctors to deliver abortion care and this has allowed us to set up a number of small units closer to women's homes around the country. That has been a strong contributory factor in the increase of early medical abortion and the knock-on effect of having the gestational age that women are able to obtain abortions come down.