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Women in Scotland are set to become the first in the UK to be allowed to take the abortion pill at home.

Campaign groups welcomed a move they said offered “clear potential advantages”. It means women will no longer have to travel to clinics to terminate pregnancies.

Scotland's Chief Medical Officer Dr Catherine Calderwood wrote to health boards to say that the pill, misoprostol, can be taken by women outside a clinical setting.

The Scottish Government said the move did not require a change in the law but came under existing powers available within the 1967 Abortion Act.

Scotland's Public Health Minister Aileen Campbell said: "Abortion can be an emotive subject, however I am proud this government is working hard to ensure women are always able to access clinically safe services.

"Scotland is now the only part of the UK to offer women the opportunity to take misoprostol at home when this is clinically appropriate, a decision that allows women to be in control of their treatment and as comfortable as possible during this procedure."

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), as well as campaign groups including Engender, Amnesty Scotland and Rape Crisis Scotland welcomed the move.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, said: "We thoroughly welcome the Scottish government's decision.

"This will spare women not only the difficulties associated with having to make more than one clinic visit, childcare, transport, time off work, but it will also spare women from the risk of symptoms on their way home, having taken the medication in a clinic.

"It is simply perverse that a woman arriving at a BPAS clinic in England and Wales with an incomplete miscarriage can be given the medication to take in the comfort and privacy of her own home, while a woman seeking an abortion must take that same medication on site.

"We hope that the government will follow Scotland's lead and roll out this important policy change across the rest of Great Britain."