No. Once you take the first medical abortion tablet you can go home and come back the following day for the second treatment.

Anywhere from 5 -30 minutes; actually for pregnancies that are still in the first trimester the actual abortion procedure takes 5-10 minutes. For pregnancies in the second trimester the abortion procedure will last anywhere from 15 – 30 minutes, all dependent on the gestation period. But it all depends on which abortion procedure you have. In some cases you could be at the clinic anything from a couple of hours up to around 7 hours. This will be discussed during your consultation.

In the early stages of abortion a general anaesthetic is unnecessary. There are health risks associated with the use of general anaesthetic especially if you are overweight, suffer from heart condition, or are asthmatic. Besides, if you choose not to have an anaesthetic you will generally recover much faster after the abortion. There is the option of using general anaesthetic but this is wholly dependent on the clinic whose abortion services you are using. There is the medical abortion (abortion pill) that does not require anaesthetic.

The pain a woman will feel from both the surgical abortion and medical abortion procedures comes from muscle cramps that are similar but stronger than the usual menstrual cramps. With medical abortion you may experience heavy bleeding.  All these factors vary though, from one woman to another so it is difficult to generalise.