Abortions in the news again

No this time because of legislation but because the Department of Health has published it’s annual statistical report on abortions. So here are the key headline facts:

  • The total number of abortions performed on UK resident women in 2007 was 198,500. In 2006 this was 193,700 (2.5% rise).
  • In addition 7,100 abortions were performed for non-resident women, in 2006 this was 7,400 thus constituting a drop of around 4%.
  • 99% of those abortions were carried out under 20 weeks gestation
  • 2.8% of those abortions were for young women under the age of 16 and (culmulatively) 24.3% for young women under the age of 20. Contrastingly 63.5% were for women aged 20-35 years old.
  • 32% of women seeking abortion had had one or more abortions previously. The vast majority of those had had one previous termination (77%). Less than 1.6% had had more than three abortions. So this myth of the feckless woman having termination after termination is a complete misnomer.
  • Of those 48% were black or black british women, 41% mixed heritage, 33% Chinese or other, 31% white and 28% asian or asian british. So this is one of those sites where multiple discriminations are in-play.

The statistics do cover the marital status of women (unsurprisingly largest group are unmarried women with a partner) but not their socio-economic class. More statistics later on changes over time (currently number crunching them!).