Ruling prevents women taking second abortion pill at home

The United Kingdom’s largest independent provider of abortion services has lost its High Court bid to force the secretary of state for health, Andrew Lansley, to let women having early medical abortions in England, Scotland, and Wales take some of the treatment at home rather than in a clinic.

BPAS (formerly the British Pregnancy Advisory Service) had asked Mr Justice Supperstone to reinterpret the 1967 Abortion Act in line with advances in medical science, to allow the second dose of the two drug treatment, mifepristone and misoprostol, to be administered by the …