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London Daily Mail: “1 in 3 has had a termination before”

imageThis story is front page news at London’s Daily Mail:

1 in 3 has had a termination before

WOMEN WHO HAVE ABORTIONS AGAIN AND AGAIN

By Julie Wheldon and James Mills
[May 16 2005]

A DRAMATIC rise in repeat abortions has reinforced fears that women are increasingly having terminations for lifestyle reasons.

One in three abortions is now carried out on women who have had at least one before. Figures from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service suggest that women who become pregnant at university or at the start of their careers see abortion as a means of delaying motherhood.

Women between 20 and 24 have taken over from teenagers as the largest age group to have terminations, while only one in 100 abortions is carried out solely because of a medical risk to the baby.

[…] The new figures from the BPAS, Britain’s leading abortion provider, reveal that 181,582 terminations were carried out in England and Wales in 2003, a 3.2 per cent increase on the previous year and a 15 per cent rise since 1993.

Among these some 57,241 — 32 per cent — were on women who had already undergone a termination at least once. This is almost a third higher than the 1993 figure.

Earlier this year it was revealed that one woman from London had six abortions in just 12 months.

Abortion is legal within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy only if two doctors agree that having the child would pose a substantial risk of harm to the mother or child’s mental or physical wellbeing.

Campaigners say the issue of a mother’s mental health is routinely used to justify terminations carried out for social and economic reasons, for example if the mother is unmarried or feels too young to start a family.

[…] The BPAS figures showed that 76 per cent of abortions were on single women.

Some 1,171 girls under 15 had terminations, an eight per cent rise on the previous year. Of these, 148 were younger than 14.

There are growing calls for the legal limit on abortion to be cut from the current 24 weeks — later terminations can be carried out only for serious medical reasons.

The view has been reinforced by ultrasound scans which show how advanced unborn babies can be even at early stages of pregnancy.

Pictures published last year showed a 12-week foetus making “stepping’ motions characteristic of newborns. At 18 weeks it sucked its thumb and by 20 weeks it appeared to smile and cry.

Joel Johannesen
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