CRRC Blog

Our blog will share insight into new ideas and research that furthers access to evidence-based reproductive healthcare and choices – primarily in areas related to abortion, contraception, and STI testing.

Pain is often reported as one of the worst aspects of a medical abortion, but, as mentioned in a previous BPAS blog,  we don’t have the best evidence on how to manage it. Adequate counselling and accurate management of expectations have been identified as being linked to reduced anxiety during abortion and increased satisfaction with overall abortion experience.

Pain has long been a known issue in relation to medication abortion, but one which has seen little attention until relatively recently. There could be a number of reasons for this lack of attention, not least among them concerns that highlighting abortion as something that can be painful might be co-opted by those who wish to restrict pregnant people’s access to it. Stereotypical assumptions about pain in relation to female bodies may also play a part.

Medical abortion is known to be a painful process, however, there is limited evidence for how best to manage this pain. The existing data suffer from a lack of validated measures for pain during this procedure. A robust, validated tool for measuring pain during abortion would be valuable to the field both in terms of research and, potentially, clinically.