Britain Has More Abortions Than Any Other European Country, Overtakes France

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Nov 12, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Britain Has More Abortions Than Any Other European Country, Overtakes France

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 12
, 2009

London, England (LifeNews.com) — Great Britain now does more abortions annually than any other nation in Europe, with government figures showing it overtaking France even though France has a higher population. Britain now ranks sixth in the world in annual abortion figures behind China, the U.S., Russia, India and Japan.

The latest figures were compiled by the Norway-based pro-life group Institute for Family Policies based on statistics collected by the European Union’s statistical arm, Eurostat.

They showed 219,336 abortions in England, Scotland and Wales compared with 209,699 in France. Both nations had more abortions than other countries such as Romania with 150,246 and Italy with 126,562.

Abortions are rising rapidly in Spain but the nation still posted only 112,138 abortions in 2007.

According to the London Telegraph, Britain also had the highest number of teenage abortions with 48,150 done on girls under the age of 20 compared with France’s 31,779.

As it stands now, the annual number of abortions done in the EU nations in 2007 was equivalent to the populations of the 10 smallest countries in the European Union.

Phyllis Bowman, of the Britain Right to Life group, said the abortion totals show the British government’s sex education program promoting contraception and birth control is not working.

"These are not surprising figures," she told The Daily Mail. "The Government is not so much running a Teenage Pregnancy Strategy as a Teenage Abortion Strategy. Conceptions are not going down and abortion is going up, exactly the reverse of what was supposed to happen."

"Britain will continue to have record abortion levels until ministers recognize the idiocy of these policies," she added.

The Telegraph indicated that Children’s Minister Dawn Primarolo said the early data for 2008 shows the number of abortions falling.

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