Labour spin and ignorance on abortions is far from comforting
Dear Dawn Primarolo,
As Health Minister you tend to only crop up in the media when announcements are less than glamorous, and today is no exception. You are claiming success from new figures that have shown the number of abortions, including for those under-18 and under-16, has fallen since 2007 and fell by 4.5% in the last year alone. In addition, more abortions are happening at under 10 weeks’ gestation. While this may offer some cause for celebration, the flipside of these figures is much darker and more complicated than your little press release chirping suggests.
Your spin on the numbers gives a very positive perspective. Overall the number of abortions being carried out has dropped and more are being performed earlier in the pregnancy. There has been a 1.6% drop in the number of abortions performed for women living in England and Wales from 198,499 in 2007 to 195,296 last year. Nine in ten abortions were carried out in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, while the abortion rate for girls under 16 has also fallen from 4.4 terminations per 1,000 in 2007 to 4.2 per 1,000 girls last year. Gill Frances, chairwoman of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, said: “The drop in teenage abortion is very encouraging and hopefully reflects a resumption in the long-term downward trend of teenage pregnancy.” Michaela Aston, spokeswoman for LIFE, a pro-life charity, said: “This reduction in the number of abortions is definitely positive news and reason for hope. While there are still far too many abortions, the small decrease in numbers in nearly every age group suggests that more and more women are recognising the value of their unborn child and seeing that there are positive ways to cope with crisis pregnancy.” The strange thing is that none of this fills me with any confidence because you are only looking at one side of the coin.
Firstly, a drop in abortion rates can be due (at least in part) to more pregnancies and births. If you could show a decrease in abortions AND births then yes, you can take credit for tackling teenage pregnancy. However, the most recent statistics showed that under-16s conception rate is now on the rise again which, when coupled with falling abortions, could quite easily result in more teenagers becoming parents – which is hardly comforting. Secondly, there were 4,113 abortions for under-16s and 1,097 abortions among under-15s in England and Wales in 2008, of which 931 were carried out on 14-year-olds while 166 were among girls aged under 14. Is this really cause for celebration? Thirdly, the fact that we still have 1,150 abortions a year being performed at 22 to 23 weeks gestation and 124 were at 24 weeks and over does not fill me with confidence either. Finally, the most shocking revelation was that a third of abortions are now carried out for women who have already terminated at least one pregnancy. The proportion of repeat abortions has been steadily increasing since 1998 when 29% of procedures were for women who had already been through at least one termination. It means there were 64,715 abortions performed last year where the women had been through at least one previously. The figures show in 2,780 cases the abortion was the woman’s fourth, in 739 cases it was the fifth, in 168 cases it was the sixth abortion and 68 women were having their seventh termination and 46 women had already been through seven or more abortions. Of the 19,318 abortions giving to under-18s, 1,448 were their second abortions and for 74 girls it was their third. These statistics send a chill down my spine. What kind of society can be proud of itself when people can behave in such a manner? It’s not like contraception is hard to come by or particularly expensive.
Needless to say, you’ve tried to spin the best line you possibly can. While there is some room for encouragement, your conclusions are far too black and white. To make matters slightly more embarrassing for you, Dr Patricia Lohr - Medical Director of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which provides contraception and abortion services – said: “Abortion figures have tended to fluctuate slightly year-on-year but the overall background trend remains for a gradual rise in the numbers of abortions. On the back of the unusually large 3.9% rise in 2007, 2008’s fall of 1.6% seems to reflect a stabilisation in abortion numbers along this gently growing upwards trend.” Not quite the pretty picture that you wanted to paint, and I daresay it’s nothing for our society to be particularly proud of either. Please stop playing politics with pregnancy and abortion statistics and concentrate on the underlying problems instead.
Yours disrespectfully,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
A well researched post LFAT. As more of an environmentalist than an evangelical ‘every cell has a right to live’ type, I would be pleased to see more abortions at early stages if it meant less births. However, you are completely correct in saying that contraception cheap. It is infact free for women on the NHS and condoms aren’t exactly going to break the bank. I understand that they are not completely fool proof and accidents do happen but can these same accidents happen more than 7 times. And I assumed we were meant to learn from our mistakes – obviously this doesn’t apply to every member of the Homo sapien species.
The New Scientist recently had a report on the male contraception injection, which seems to be developing fast. Finally there might be some onus on the male in terms of contraception and preventing pregnancies and abortions.
I sincerely hope that this isn’t covering up more live births among the young. I’m pro abortion – lets face facts: if a 14 or 15 or even 16 year old girl has a child, what’s going to happen? That ‘parent’ will almost certainly fall out of education and thus employment, settling in to a lifetime of benefits and underclass-living. Their child, raised by an impoverished, undereducated, jobless parent will either match that parent in becoming a welfare queen or go on to cost us more money by being imprisoned or otherwise causing crime/anti-social behaviour.
Or, worse, the child will be put up for adoption and languish in a care home where they may well be subjected to the kinds of sexual abuse well recorded in Islington facilities or indeed Jersey.
Freakonomics has an interesting chapter correlating the drop in crime with the introduction of abortion with Rowe v Wade…
Candid, male contraception is a debate for another day! Admittedly it wasn’t teen mums who’d had seven abortions (the women tended to approaching middle age to rack up that many).
Shaun said, I also have no problem with abortion itself as it can be the best option for everyone concerned – including the child. However, these terrifying numbers make me think that the message of personal responsibility is not getting through. Then again, with a free NHS that places no onus on the service user to monitor their own behaviour, surely this was the inevitable outcome?
Shaun, you got there first. It was thanks to you that I read Freakonomics actually! I liked the section about Romania- shows the insanity of governments encouraging women to knock more babies out for the empire. Better by far to adjust to a stable/slightly falling population & try to handle the ageing of society, which I think is a much easier challenge to meet than a soaring population growth.
This is the reality of the situation. If Baby P’s mother had had a flash of unexpected intelligence, decided she couldn’t cope with a child, & requested abortion, would the likes of Dorries really have wanted to force her to give birth?
Of course a better solution is more widely available contraception, & better still is to offer these children some form of hope for a future that doesn’t involve having babies they are unsuited for. But those who are “pro-life” do not explain what they think, in their wisdom, should be done with these unwanted babies.
“The proportion of repeat abortions has been steadily increasing since 1998…”
That’s the bit that sickens me the most, frankly…
Candid.
Condoms are free if you ask.
An ex-girlfriend, who had to stop her pill for some reason went to the local clinic. She was told she needed to use condoms for a week, and would she like some.
They gave her 30, which they must have considered the average number of leg-overs a Camden girl could expect in a week.
Sadly, if I recall, we missed the target by a good 95%.
Asquith, the aspirational side of this debate is sadly often ignored, yet I think it is crucial to addressing the problem in the long term.
Julia, I hear you, I really do.
Bill, don’t put it past Labour to introduce new government targets on how many leg-overs one must achieve in Camden.
If this tory mp had done his research properly he would know that the recent rise in teenage conceptions was largely due to abortions and not more girls having babies. The rate at which young teenagers have been having babies has fallen every year since 1999.
What MP? Besides, I would need raw numbers to assess the validity of your statement. Data on teenagers having babies would be much appreciated…..