Teens having as many as 7 abortions: UK stats

by The Editors

LONDON, UK, May 28, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - National Health Service (NHS) data for abortions carried out in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available, have revealed that of the 38,269 teenagers who aborted their children, three had seven previous abortions and two had had six.

According to the statistics, another fourteen teenage girls had their fifth abortion in 2010, 57 teens aborted for the fourth time, 485 for a third time, and more than 5,300 were committed on teenagers who had already had at least one abortion.

In all, repeat abortions accounted for about a third of 189,574 abortions carried out in 2010 for women of all ages.

‘‘There is something seriously wrong with a country where teenagers are having even one abortion, let alone repeat abortions to this extent,” Rebecca Mallinson of the UK’s Pro Life Alliance, told the Telegraph.

“We are failing these young people in an appalling way, and storing up serious sexual health problems for the future, whether the direct issue of sexually transmitted diseases, but also the effects that multiple abortions can have on future fertility.”

“Abortion is a serious procedure, one which all sides of the abortion debate agree should not be undertaken lightly. Yet here we have young women, still not fully mature physiologically and emotionally, undergoing abortions numerous times,” a spokeswoman for the UK’s LIFE charity, a pro-life organization that provides support for mothers, children and young families, told the Telegraph.

LIFE issued a statement warning that the high numbers of repeat abortions are symbolic of a wider problem - that abortion is being used as a publicly funded form of birth control in a society that no longer views the killing of the unborn “as a last resort in uniquely difficult situations.”

Josephine Quintavalle, founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), a public interest group focusing on ethical dilemmas surrounding human reproduction, said the number of repeat abortions “is simply extraordinary.”

“Abortion is an unpleasant and harrowing experience for women and to hear it is happening repeatedly makes your hair stand on end.”

The Daily Mail reported that the NHS spends £1million a week on repeat abortions, with some women returning for as many as nine abortions in their lifetime.

“The figures will fuel the debate on whether abortions, which cost the NHS up to £1,000 each, are being sanctioned as more of a lifestyle choice than a medical requirement,” the Mail suggested.