UK: Controversy over teenage ‘repeat abortions’

Government data have disclosed that 89 girls aged 17 or under who terminated a pregnancy last year had had at least two abortions previously, the Daily Telegraph reports. 

Christian doctors said the statistics demonstrated the failure of liberal sex education policies. Dr Peter Saunders, from the Christian Medical Fellowship, said that the figures were profoundly depressing.

‘It is increasingly clear that abortion is simply being used as a form of contraception by a growing percentage of girls and women, and that tired policies of values-free sex education, condoms and morning-after pills are not working,’ he said.

Statistics on ‘repeat abortions’ tend to cause controversy amongst some sections of the media. But such statistics, and claims about their significance, need to be handled sensibly. These figures have only been systematically collected for the last decade or so, and they are based on women’s self-reports of previous abortions. This means that, as abortion provision improves and the stigma associated with it decreases, women may be more likely both to have previous abortions and to report them.

The national abortion statistics for 2009 show that, for women of all ages, 34 per cent of abortions were performed on women who had had one or more previous abortions. This is a rise from 30 percent in 2000. As Dr Sam Rowlands notes in his contribution to the Abortion Review Special Edition: ‘Abortion and Women’s Lives’, this pattern is what might be expected, based on research across societies where abortion has been legal for some decades.

In relation to teenagers, the national statistics indicate a slightly different picture to the recent media reports. In 2009, for girls under the age of 18, 1,341 abortions were performed on women who had had one previous abortion: 8% of the total for that age group. The national statistics do not give any specific numbers for women aged under 18, or for those aged 18-24, who had had more than one previous abortion.

This does not mean that no teenagers have had previous abortions. It does mean that the numbers are difficult to verify, and in any case are likely to be small. The existence of ‘repeat abortions’ amongst girls under the age of 18 is therefore more likely to reflect their individual circumstances than it is any general social problem to do with sex education or promiscuity. As Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, said, while teenage girls often feel able to handle sex, emotionally and physically, sometimes they struggle to handle the planning that comes with contraception.

Dozens of teenage girls have had three abortions or more. Daily Telegraph, 12 June 2010

Also read:

Teenagers and ‘repeat abortions’: contraception is not a magic bullet. Commentary by Lisa Hallgarten, director of Education For Choice. Abortion Review, 18 June 2010