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LONDON, April 9, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The United Kingdom has announced that a successful program to control population levels has convinced 110,000 women to sign up for potentially abortion-inducing forms of “contraception.”

The National Health Services (NHS) introduced a program in April 2009 tying doctors' pay to their ability to meet certain benchmarks, including increasing the number of women using long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs).

A study released on April 2 found that the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) increased the number of women using “IUDs, implants, and injectables” by an estimated 110,000 across the UK.

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According to the drugs' description, every form of LARC has the potential to cause an early abortion by preventing a newly conceived baby from implanting in the uterus.

“The increased use of LARCs, especially the injectables, will increase the number of ‘silent abortions’ by an unknowable amount,” Dr. Brian Clowes, the director of research and education at Human Life International, told LifeSiteNews. “The patient information pamphlets on all of these contraceptives specifically mention the possibility of interfering with implantation of an embryo – a newly formed human life.”

“The science of how these drugs actually destroy life is typically overlooked,” he said, “due to an argument over semantics: defining pregnancy as beginning at implantation in the womb rather than at conception, when human life begins.”

The mechanism itself is something its supporters do not contest. The Family Planning Association, a British affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), states on its website that each kind of long-acting contraception “thins the lining of the uterus (womb) to prevent a fertilized egg implanting.”

“The rise in LARC prescribing is a huge success story and reflects all the work [doctors] have put into counseling women towards choosing best options for their contraceptive needs,” said Dr. Sonia Saxena, who led the study, which was published online at PLOS One. “In fact our figures may well underestimate the impact of the program.”

Researchers examined the records of 581 general practices in England over a five-year period ending in March 2012. “Over the three years from 2009 to 2012, [the QOF program] has resulted in 8,700 more women receiving prescriptions for LARCs” in these locations alone.”

Extrapolating that to the general population, they believe 110,000 women have opted to use the potentially abortifacient LARCs who otherwise would not have.

“LARC prescribing was stable prior to April 2009, with a decreasing gradient of −0.4% annually,” the evaluation said. “This changed to an increasing trend in LARC prescribing of 4% annually after the introduction of QOF contraception incentives. Overall, the mean number of LARC prescribed by practices increased by 10% in the 4 years after-QOF contraception indicators were implemented.”

Great Britain has had a moderate increase in birthrate during the past decade – 18 percent over the last 10 years in England and Wales. One-quarter of the nation's births are to foreign-born mothers (185,000 of 724,000).

The native-born British birthrate has also increased since 2001, from 1.56 children to 1.84. But it is still below the 2.1 total fertility rate (TFR) considered a necessary replacement level.

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The NHS program may have other victims, the nation's pro-family leaders warn.

When QOF was announced in 2009, John Smeaton, chief executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), cited studies that show “family planning, and increased access to it, increases the likelihood that teenagers will engage in sexual activity. “

“To use contraception is to play Russian roulette with unplanned pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease – the more one uses it, the more likely those things are to happen,” he said.

“There is no mention in the government's document about reducing the frequency of sexual intercourse, delaying the age of first intercourse, or restricting intercourse to one long-term partner, let alone anything about abstinence,” he added.

“One needs to ask: Cui bono? Who benefits from the government's strategy?” Smeaton said. “It would seem to be abortion providers, contraceptive manufacturers, the sex industry, and those doctors and other health professionals who let down their profession by going along with the government's policy. All at the expense of young people's health and happiness and disposable unborn children.”

The QOF program was launched in April 2009, one month after Jonathon Porritt, a Green Party member and adviser to Parliament and Prince Charles, said the British population must be cut in half to 30 million to assure the planet's environmental sustainability.

The PLOS One evaluation came out just days before a new U.S. government report that suggests Medicaid pay to make abortifacient LARCs available to minor girls without parental notification.