Multiple Abortions Common For UK Teens: Over 5,000 In 2008

Not only does the UK have an incredibly high rate of teenage pregnancy, but last year more than 5,000 teenagers had a repeat abortion.

The numbers of teenagers in the UK who get pregnant each year are also rising, in spite of the government’s effort to reduce these rates.

The usual anti-choice arguments have arisen from this data:

“There is an enormous amount of evidence to show that efforts to provide young people with contraception in an effort to reduce numbers of pregnancies only leads to more and more abortions.

It means that young women are more prepared to have sex because they know they can always get an abortion.”

However, “no figures were produced for previous years” for under 20s so there is no way to say if this rate of multiple abortions is increasing or decreasing.

Conservative health spokesman Anne Milton said that the figures “demonstrate the Government’s failure to produce a coherent and effective sexual health policy for England.

“Abortions can be incredibly traumatic for women, and terminating an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy can have a damaging effect on mental health,” she added.

She called for improved information about contraception for vulnerable young women.

Miss Milton added: “The Government needs to get to the root causes of social breakdown which are causing so many unplanned pregnancies in the first place.”

London also has more abortions than anywhere else in the UK. It is important to recognise that a lot of this might be due to access. People know they can get an abortion in London and they know they can be anonymous. In small towns it might be that your cousin’s boyfriend works at the clinic and there is no privacy. As well, with the lack of access to abortion in Ireland there are probably inflated rates when the Irish women go to London.

Access to abortion is a right every woman should have and this should never be questioned or taken away.

But is also essential that the sexual health education of British young people is improved because, although it is their right to have an abortion, it is much better if the pregnancy could be prevented in the first place.