Wales Sees Teen Abortions Rise to Five-Year High, New Government Figures Show
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 3, 2009
London, England (LifeNews.com) — New government figures from Wales show the number of abortions done on teenagers at a five-year high. The stats show 1,043 teenage girls had abortions in 2007, up from 906 in 2002 and the numbers are worrying pro-life groups and conservative lawmakers.
Overall, the total number of abortions done in Wales rose to 8,765 in 2007, up a staggering 18 percent from the 7,396 abortions in 2002.
Of the women who had an abortion in 2007, the government figures show abortion is increasingly used as a form of birth control as more than 2,400 of the women had a previous abortion at the time of the one they had in 2007.
Conservative health spokesman Andrew RT Davies said the rise is "worrying."
"Aside from the human implications, the rise in abortions over recent years has consequences for the NHS which the assembly government cannot afford to ignore, he said.
Andrew Dearden of the British Medical Association in Wales told the London Times he didn’t know why the abortions were going up.
"I think it’s very difficult to say what’s behind a rise as there are multiple things that could be behind it. Often it is just trends in society," he said.
Though abortion advocates are more aggressively promoting birth control, contraception, and comprehensive sexual education in schools, Dearden claimed more of that is needed to reduce abortions.
The figures show 214 abortions on girls aged 16 or younger in 2002 and 221 in 2007. There were 692 abortions on girls 16-17 in 2002 and 822 in 2007. And the number of abortions on girls 18-19 shot up from 916 in 2002 to 1,209 in 2007.
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