John Hayward Posted: 19 June 2008
Keywords: Health, Lifestyle Issues, Sex & Families,
Today's annual abortion statistics for England and Wales from the Department of Health make for dismal reading:
- The total number of abortions in 2007 rose by 2.5% to an all time high of 198,499, 35% of which were carried out using the "abortion pill".
- Abortions among girls aged under 16 rose by 10%.
- In the under 14s, abortions rose by 21%.
- In the past decade, abortions in the under 16s has risen by 27%.
- As in 2006, the abortion rate was highest among women age 19, at 36 per 1,000, and 32% of women undergoing abortions had undergone one or more previous abortions.
As has been noted by Lord Steel, who introduced what became the 1967 Abortion Act, abortion itself is not the problem - the problem is the unwanted pregnancy. Sex education and the widespread availablility of contraception have done nothing to prevent this trend. I suspect that nothing will, until and unless our culture recognises the failings of individualism and accepts that each of us has a place in a network of relationships radiating out from the family to the wider community and that even our individual and private decisions have an impact on this network.
"I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live."
Deuteronomy 30:19 19 June 2008
Has anyone noticed the relationship between the abortion rate and the demographic "time bomb", where the retired are beginning to outnumber the fewer people of working age. I don't have the exact numbers, but I believe that the cumulative total of abortions since 1967 (99% healthy babies) exceeds 6 million. Over a 40 year time frame this would easily equate to the approximately 12-15 million people who are missing from the workplace.
I would appreciate it if anyone has the exact research on this. The implications of this aspect of abortion are rarely, if ever, debated.
Arthur Green 2 July 2008