Development of a national referral centre for surgical abortion at Homerton University Hospital

### Key messages Abortion services in the UK are increasingly commissioned within the independent sector. This has improved accessibility and lowered costs for the care of women who have no significant medical problems, but creates access problems for women requiring hospital-based abortion care, as hospital-based National Health Service (NHS) units lose funding and cease to operate. To indicate the scale of need for hospital-based abortion care, The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas), an independent-sector abortion provider, has reported that in 2016 and 2017 it arranged referrals to NHS providers for 2900 women. Due to the shortage of hospital-based services, particularly those offering care in the second trimester, these patients often have to wait several weeks for a referral to be accepted and may face a further wait until their appointment. They also may need to travel large distances. A significant minority of these women are unable to access abortion at all and are forced to continue pregnancies they would almost certainly be eligible to terminate within the UK legal framework1. These ongoing pregnancies will furthermore be complicated by the same condition that complicates their abortion. Given …