by Hilary White
LONDON, March 20, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Conservative MP has revealed that increasing numbers of women in the UK are using abortion as a form of alternate contraception, with over 30 teenage girls a week asking for repeat abortions.
Mark Pritchard, MP for The Wrekin in Shropshire, told the House of Commons that abortion in Britain has reached “industrial” levels, with at least 1300 women in his figures having had as many as five abortions.
The statistics for 2006 showed that nearly 15,000 women in the UK have had three or more abortions, with 54 having had eight or more abortions. A total of 193,737 women in England and Wales had an abortion in 2006, 17,173 of which were on women under 18 years.
Pritchard said the numbers make it clear that abortion was being used as a form of back-up contraception.
“These are shocking and disturbing figures and the Government must put in place a task force to investigate why multiple and repeat abortions are taking place in such large numbers,” he said.
The Department of Health responded with a statement, saying the solution was a “targeted campaign to highlight contraceptive choices available to women” when they want an abortion. The government has allocated £26.8 million for 2008/09 to “improve access to contraception”. A department spokesman said, “Women who have undergone abortion are at risk of future unintended pregnancies and represent an important group with unmet contraceptive needs.”
“Future contraception should be discussed, and supplies offered, before a woman is discharged following abortion.”
But those who work with women in crisis pregnancies say that women who go for abortions are always told about contraceptives. Women are inundated with information and free contraceptives, even discounting that provided by schools.
Fr. Timothy Finigan, the head of the Association of Priests for the Gospel of Life, answered Pritchard’s question, saying the reason there are so many multiple and repeat abortions is “obvious”. “People don’t want to have children. The bottom line is there’s an anti-life mentality where children are seen as a bad thing,” Fr. Finigan told LifeSiteNews.com
As to the government’s insistence on more contraception, Fr. Finigan said, “All those women have had loads of contraceptive advice, and they’ve either ignored it, or it has failed and they have gone for abortions. It’s not a mystery.”
“People are encouraged to have as much sex as they like, and sex equals babies.”
One London-based crisis pregnancy centre says that at least 60 per cent of the women they see have been using one or more forms of contraception.
Fr. Finigan pointed out that the statistics quoted by Pritchard are probably drastically low. The redefinition of abortion excludes the use of the morning after pill, an abortifacient hormonal drug administered to women in the earliest stages of pregnancy, but that is called “emergency contraception” in the medical community.