How the struggle to access contraception in the UK is causing a boom in unplanned pregnancies

Women might have been finding it increasingly difficult to access contraception in recent years due to sexual health services being decimated by cuts, but coronavirus has catapulted the issue into overdrive.

A new report found one in three women does not know how to access contraception because their normal means of doing so have been cut off during the Covid-19 crisis - with providers warning women are grappling with a postcode lottery of services.

Marie Stopes, a leading UK abortion provider that polled 1,000 women, said those needing contraception have been “disgracefully neglected” during the pandemic and young women and girls have been hardest hit.

Tracey Forsyth, lead contraceptive nurse at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the UK’s largest abortion provider, told The Independent: “Contraception services have been slow to recover as lockdown has eased because of the reduction of appointments and because of cleaning between appointments and new social distancing rules.

“It is also linked to the difficulties of getting personal protective equipment (PPE) and the time it takes to put this on in between seeing patients. It is also hard for services to recover as staff have been redeployed due to the coronavirus crisis.

“I’m talking to lots of women who are now pregnant because they couldn’t get their contraception. Me and my team are talking to 20 a day. Lots of them are having an abortion. They’ll say things like, 'I couldn’t get my pill because I was told it wasn’t the doctor’s priority.’ It’s very upsetting for these women. They wanted to use the contraceptive pill. They say, ‘Why is me not wanting an unplanned pregnancy not their priority?’ It has been an absolute nightmare for women.”

Sexual health clinics shut or operated a skeleton service during the lockdown as staff were redeployed to care for Covid-19 patients while large numbers of GPs were off sick with the virus or self-isolating.

Earlier in the month, MPs warned demand for abortion and maternity care could rise due to women struggling to access contraception during the Covid-19 emergency - warning this could lead to unplanned pregnancies.

An Inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sexual and Reproductive Health found women are being pushed from service to service when trying to access contraception - saying 13 per cent cuts to the contraceptive budget from 2015 to 2018 have drastically curbed access.

Dame Diana Johnson DBE, co-chair of the group, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of easy access to contraception in the lives of women. At a time when many of us feel less certain about our futures, it’s more vital than ever that women can exercise choice over what happens in their lives.

“However, our Inquiry found that for many women, getting access to contraception is difficult and time-consuming. Due to the unnecessary complexity of the system, many women are being bounced from service to service, undergoing multiple, intimate consultations and spending months on waiting lists to access their preferred contraceptive method.”

Sexual health and contraception services have been persistently underfunded for years - with frontline service providers previously telling The Independent women’s health is being put at risk and abortion rates are rising because clinics are being forced to close due to “damaging” cuts.

Figures show the proportion of councils reducing the number of places providing contraceptive services has risen from just nine per cent in 2015-16 to 26 per cent in 2018-19.

Cuts to services are known to impact low-income women and girls most badly due to them being less able to make long journeys to access sexual health providers.