Ms Alana Ryan:

It goes back to the points made earlier around gestational limits and the need to bring the model in line with the WHO guidance. In practice, what we have is that after 12 weeks, there is a requirement to demonstrate why a person needs care based on very narrow grounds whether they are the definition of health and risk to health or fatal foetal anomalies. It is why us, the IFPA and many others in this field are advocating for a move away from those kinds of rigid criteria and instead towards a model that is based on the doctor-patient relationship that allows abortion on request without the gestational limit, which does not have an evidence base and which the WHO recommends against. To be clear, we disagree with having a model of care that requires the service user to demonstrate meeting very narrow criteria and which really inhibits that person's agency in this whole process.