At home abortions

Press, 26 October 1982, Page 20

At home abortions

NZPA-Reuter Stockholm A do-it-yourself method of abortion has been developed and tested by doctors at Stockholm’s Karolinska Hospital. Their work is based on research by this year’s Nobel Prize winners in medicine, one of the team told Reuters. The home abortion method, which a Danish doctor, Neils Christensen, said has been tested by about 100 Swedish women during the past two years, has come to light since the announcement of the Nobel award. The method involves the use of prostaglandins, natural substances in the body whose effects were first discovered by this year’s Nobel laureates in the 1950 s and early 19605. Prostaglandins, which sometimes alleviate pain and sometimes cause it, act to terminate pregnancy by stimulating the uterus to contract in simulation of labour and so expel the foetus. Dr Christensen said the home abortion is more painful than the traditional suction method, and hospitals will only permit its use by women who had experienced childbirth or miscarriage and were psychologically prepared for contraction pains. Users must take tranquilisers for a month to reduce anxiety before administering the prostaglandins, and then only with a trusted idult present and a doctor on call in case of emergency. The actual abortion, which must be performed in the first 49 days of an unwanted pregnancy, is effected by two suppositories containing synthetic prostaglandins which are inserted into the vagina within a period of six hours. One advantage of the technique,. Dr Christensen said, was that it gave women the option of terminating pregnancy at home, in private, rather than entering hospital. Home abortions pose no legal problems in Sweden, where women have the right to a pregnancy termination on demand. The method, which is sponsored by the World Health Organisation, could also be of much importance in developing countries where hospital space was limited, Dr Christensen said. His co-workers on the team which developed the method were Gothenburg Professor, Nils Wiquist, who also produced Scandinavia’s first test tube baby. Professor Krister Green and Professor Marc Bygdeman, all of whom earlier worked under the Swedish Nobel laureates. Sune Bergstroem and Bengt Samuelsson. The two Swedes and a Briton. John Vane, shared the 1982 Nobel Prize for their seminal research on prostaglandins.