Abstract Objectives: Therapeutic, regulatory and technological changes have contributed to new directions in abortion care. We aimed to gather views of healthcare professionals on current and future regulation and provision of abortion in Britain. Design: Cross sectional, stratified cluster sample survey with additional free text comments. Setting: Healthcare settings in Britain Participants: Healthcare professionals (nurses, doctors, midwives, pharmacists) working in a range of healthcare services, including dedicated abortion services. Measures: Knowledge of and attitudes towards the regulation and provision of abortion. Results: 771 healthcare professionals from all areas of Britain responded to the survey. Support for abortion being the choice of a woman was high, more than nine in ten saw it as such and a clear majority favoured abortion being treated as a health rather than a legal issue. Only 6.2% saw abortion at any gestational age as contrary to their personal beliefs and a similarly small minority (6.7%) were against abortion after 12 weeks gestation. One in five of all healthcare professionals and a third of those aged under 30 were unaware that the law in Britain requires two doctors to authorise an abortion. Free text comments revealed opposition to the need for this legal requirement. Support for an extended role for nurses in abortion care was high; two thirds (65.3%) agreed that nurses should be able to prescribe abortion medication. Little more than a third of all healthcare professionals (37%) agreed that abortion should be standard practice in their service; the proportion was highest among those in sexual and reproductive health services (58.4%) and lowest among those in general practice (18.7%). Conclusions: Health care professionals in Britain are generally supportive of abortion being treated in the same way as other health issues and would be likely to support any moves to decriminalise abortion.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Ethical approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Committees of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (Refs. 22761/26332) and the National Health Service (NHS) (Ref. 21/LO/0236)/ NHS Health Research Authority (IRAS Approval ID 297849).

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Approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Committees of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (Refs. 22761/26332) and the National Health Service (NHS) (Ref. 21/LO/0236)/ NHS Health Research Authority (IRAS Approval ID 297849).

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