The only thing that concerns me about first trimester abortions is the inconvenience caused to the woman - it obviously would be much better if contraception had worked/been used but there certainly is no ethical/moral issue. Later abortions are more difficult morally but it still better to let women choose abortion rather than force them to bring a child into the world to be raised by parents not ready or capable to bring them up.

Most anti-choice on abortion Tories/religious prats like Ian Dale/Cormac Murphy-O’Connor etc. with their moral posturing actually are responsible for this country having legislation that delays abortions, increasing the number of late trimester abortions. They also encourage untold anguish on women with their religious and/or pompous guilt trip they try to pin on women. Their other tactic is to try to lower the upper limit for abortions and that only results in the wealthy going abroad while the poor have to have children they do not want - there is nothing moral about this.

Has anybody any ideas on how we reduce the number of these religious/Tory idiots?

As for the issue of pro-life VS pro-choice, as Unity has pointed out, pro-choice does not just mean pro-abortion. It’s concerned with choice to make decisions, with all the information available.

And if we’re talking about destroying lives, an unwanted baby can destroy the life of the prospective mother. When faced with the option of ruining someone’s life by bringing an unwanted child into the world, or the sheer expense of destroying said baby, surely the best option would be prevention? A cause not often supported by the “pro-lifers” out there.

…withOUT clauses like ‘potential’ being included…

“This means that nearly one in three four babies conceived in this country is aborted. Let me repeat that. One in three four babies conceived in this country is aborted.”

Now there is I believe a case to be made for the fact that babies aren’t conceived they are born. Otherwise the figures are surely a lot higher than even Ian suggests when you take into account the number of ‘babies’ that fail to implant in the uterus.

“What on earth does it say about our broken society that so many living beings are aborted?”

Again. Living being seemed to suggest sentient being, not a term that can be liberally used around abortion with clauses like ‘potential’ being included. And finally (from the comment above):

“But ‘pro-choice’? There is no fucking choice for aborted foetuses. None at all. Just death and oblivion.”

Not only do we have the notion of choice for a ball of cells that is critically incapable of choosing anything - its a nice piece of rhetoric but it is clear that the choice suggested by this epithet is that of the mother (the sentient, thinking, choosing being. And then of course there is the implicit accusation that abortion is the murder of the foetus - but again this side-steps an important debate about what constitutes ‘life’ in the first place.

This is my problem - this highly charged rhetoric that is thrown around with such alacrity as to conceal that the arguments it supports are built on a system of values and morals that are positively at odds with the reason and neutrality that its adherents (Dale et. al.) claim to possess.

The penultimate paragraph of your reply to ‘Mike’ is something I can happily agree with 100%.

But lets leave such emotive terms as ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ out of it, eh?

I oppose the death penalty 100%. No exceptions- even for the foullest of killers. I’m not Catholic- but there is something in the credo of Catholicism of the absolute, unconditional right to life that strikes a chord with me- and,I suspect, many other readers.

I also agree that some abortions will always be necessary- rape, incest, where the foetus is severely deformed and/or not likely to survive; and of course, where the mother’s life is at danger or would be at danger.

But ‘pro-choice’? There is no fucking choice for aborted foetuses. None at all. Just death and oblivion.

I’m not giving you a panacea; or a solution; or a ‘happy ending’. Because there probably isn’t one. It is probably the trickiest debate in politics- assuming that it is politics at all.

I just have a problem with [quite rightly] protecting the right to life of the most evil; whilst denying it to the most innocent. That’s all. And no, I don’t know what the answer is.

Let’s just cover this.

Accurate figures are important here because Iain makes the observation that the abortion stats for Britain are ’so much higher’ than in many other countries:

1) They’re not, and

2) The reasons for this are complex and often not easily extrapolated to the UK, e.g. the abortion rate in Saudi Arabia is zero because abortion is illegal, but few but the most blinkered religious believers would seriously suggest we go down the absolute prohibition route to reduce our own number because of the obvious consequences of such a move.

As for being shocked - that’s okay if you’re a layman and all this completely new to you, but to pretend that when you’re actively involved in politics, suggest that you’re pro-life and spend a fair bit of time bigging up Nadine Dorries, who written a couple of spectacularly empty-header pieces on abortion in the last couple of weeks is heading towards hypocrisy and trying to provoke a reaction for reaction’s sake, and asking people who comment on your blog to suggest what should be done rather than look for evidence, about as half-witted as it gets.

Without getting too deeply into the pro-life/pro-choice debate, the crux of the issue here is that no one in their right mind thinks that 193,700 abortions a year is a good thing.

Where the difference come into play is when it comes to the question of what to do about it.

The ‘pro-life’ lobby think that prohibition and trying to moralise the problem away is the right thing to do, and there is not a shred of valid evidence to support such an idea.

Those are pro-choice take the view that prevention is the best approach, which means better sex/relationship education in schools, free access to contraception and that one of our most pressing needs is to understand why women choose to have abortions and how we can use that information to address their needs and work to prevent unwanted pregnancies, which is the best solution all around.

It’s not wrong to be shocked by such statistic, but what matters is how to react to them - by citing an 1800 year old book as authority for everything or talking to 21st century women about what they really need.

Also worth making the point that just because a woman is Catholic, doesn’t actually make her less likely to have an abortion. I make this sweeping generalisation on the basis of figures from the US, which show that Catholic women are actually more likely to have abortions than Protestant women, probably because of a combination of lack of use of contraception plus social stigma around children outside marriage.

Medical interventions yes - not sure if the breakdowns by category for this year have been released as yet, but breakdowns based on the six categories specified in the Abortion Act are produced and published.

Age profiles - yes, again. Not got the full figures to hand but last year it was about 4,000 for under 16’s and the largest number of abortions were in the 20-24 age group, although figure for the upper age range (35+) are increasing as a reflection both of women taking decisions about when their family is complete and limitations on types of contraception available to over 35’s due to age-related health issues.

Sorry, I’m at work and so can’t check, but that might have an effect on the figures and how they’re seen.

xD.

There don’t appear to be separate figures for citizens of other EU states, so I would suspect that we treat the Irish Republic as a special case because its a known issue in our figures and I doubt, as yet, that much work has been done on the question of whether other nationalities add much to the figures outside of the routine ethnicity monitoring (i.e. White, Black, Asian, etc.)

The biggest concerns we should have are the general lack of research in UK into the whys of elective abortions (apparently there is a good body of research on this from Scandinavian countries) and the very worrying data from Southampton on the numbers of women having second trimester abortions because the don’t realise they’re pregnant until a fairly late stage - that last one raise clear issue about the quality of public education given to women about their own bodies.

I suspect that we can extrapolate from the US study to the UK to some considerable extent - the numbers may vary but the broad reasons given will hold for the UK - in which case the biggest factors that influence women to choose to have an abortion are:

Can’t afford a baby and not the right time/too disruptive - either due to considerations of continuing education, employment or economic circumstances. This one crops up strongly amongst women having abortions but who already have children, the decision being driven by the impact that a baby would have on their ability to provide for their existing kids.

Interestingly, a study from New Zealand I cited in an earlier post shows that of the three area, only education is significantly affected in the long term by unexpected pregnancy. Young women who fall pregnant while in F/T education tend not to return to education, or if they do, return at a lower level than when they left to have their baby - e.g. they may drop out of a degree course and return later to vocational training, if they go back at all.

Instability in personal relationships - either no stable partner or relationship problems leading to doubts about future stability and the impact that pregnancy might have, and

Finished having kids - there’s quite a high (and increasing) percentage in the US study who choose an abortion because they’ve had a late ‘accident’ after the point at which they’ve decided that enough is enough.

All these point to the importance of prevention through contraception and public education if we want to get the numbers down, with particular emphasis on free and easy to access emergency contraception.

I’m sure you’ll tell me.