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Thursday May 27, 2010


Slight Fall in UK Abortion Rate Insignificant after Decades of Increases: Pro-Life Leaders

By Hilary White

LONDON, May 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While the Department of Health of England and Wales and the Scottish NHS Information Services on Tuesday reported an overall small decrease in Britain’s abortion rate, pro-life campaigners have called on physicians to take a “reality check” on the number of British children being killed before birth. Abortion rates for England, Wales and Scotland for 2009 show a 3.2 per cent decrease last year – a small dent in Britain’s abortion rate that has seen massive increases for decades.

The data shows a total of 189,100 abortions in England and Wales, compared with 195,296 in 2008; and 13,005 abortions in Scotland compared to 13,817 in 2008.

The slight decreases in 2008 and 2009 are a recent first in a country that has seen an annual rise almost every year since abortion was legalized in 1967. In 2008, when Britain was being called the “abortion capital of Europe,” it was revealed that 205,600 unborn children were killed by abortion in 2007. Statistics for 2007 also showed a steady increase in the number of repeat abortions and abortions on younger women and teenaged girls.

Overall the abortion rate for women aged 15 to 44 was 17.5 per 1,000 in 2009, compared with 18.2 in 2008. It was highest among younger women, at 33 per 1,000 for women aged 19, 20 and 21. At total of 1,047 young women 14 or younger had an abortion in 2009, with 3,823 abortions carried out on women under 16, and 17,916 on women under 18.

Two thousand and eighty-five children were killed in 2009 under “Ground E,” meaning that there was a risk the child would be born handicapped. Under Ground E abortion is legal without restriction up to the point of full gestation. Ninety-four per cent of abortions were funded by the National Health Service, of which 60 per cent were carried out privately under NHS contracts to groups such as Marie Stopes International.

British women are regularly having multiple abortions, the statistics showed, with 2,637 women having had three previous abortions; 779 having had four and 214 having had five. A total of 48 women had seven or more abortions.

John Smeaton, the director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said that even with a slight drop in the incidence of abortion, “The equivalent of 20 classrooms of children a day are still being killed by abortion in Britain.”

Smeaton added, “Britain’s continuing high abortion statistics mean that many doctors need to be more aware about the damage abortion does.”

In addition, the statistics show a drop in the total number of live births for the first time since 2001, and that the number of older women having children has increased significantly while fewer younger women are giving birth.

The increase in births to women over 40 and in the 35 to 39 age groups has pushed the median age for a first birth to 29.4 in 2009, compared with 28.4 ten years ago.

Compared with 2008, the birth rate for women aged under 35 has fallen. Two and three-tenths per cent fewer women under age 20 gave birth, from 26 live births per 1,000 in 2008 to 25.4 in 2009. Rates for women aged 20 to 24, and 25 to 29 fell by 1.6 per cent and 1.4 per cent respectively, while for women aged 30 to 34 there was a 0.4 per cent decline.

In related news, controversy continues over Marie Stopes International airing television ads for abortion, with one self-described “pro-choice” feminist saying the ads do not do full justice to women facing crisis pregnancies.

“I am a feminist and I think the termination of one in three pregnancies in this country is an alarming figure that does not indicate a healthy society,” said Bonnie Lander Johnson, writing in the Guardian. She said the ad “is neither innocuous nor positive about open debate” and serves not the needs of women, but the goals of Marie Stopes.

The ad depicts women as victims, isolated from their family and friends, coping with a decision about what to do about an unintended pregnancy alone. Lander Johnson said that had the ad been interested in helping women, it would have listed the “full range of services available to pregnant women.”

“But Marie Stopes is advertising its own clinics and it serves them best to suggest that they are the only option available.”

“If promotion of free and frank discussion of women’s reproductive choices were really the company’s motivation, their advert would show women talking confidently about their concerns with their partners, friends, family and healthcare professionals, not living alone with their ‘problem’.”

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