In England and Wales, in the 12 months between April 2023 and March 2024, more than 355,000 people received their first treatment for cancer.
There was another figure, also in the hundreds of thousands, covering both England and Wales, reported in the media yesterday.
277,970: The number of abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2023. 299,614: the number of abortions carried out that same year throughout the whole of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).
One is life-saving, the other is life-ending. And somehow we’ve reached a point where the number of lives ended rivals the number of people beginning various cancer treatments with the goal of prolonging and saving life.
What does that say about us? About our government and our health service, our society?
It certainly says something. And it’s not good. News or commentary related to abortion is never really in the mainstream, always demoted to the realm of being part of the culture wars. But in reality, abortion is far from something obscure.
It is an everyday occurrence, an hourly occurrence even. Often shrouded in secrecy. Rarely really talked about. But it has now become so common that the numbers have shot up to the point that a new, appalling record is being set each year.
The 2023 numbers show a yearly increase of 26,618 (over 10%) from the previous year. Women having repeat abortions is also, worryingly, on the rise in England and Wales, jumping from 102,689 in 2022 to 117,165 in 2023. That means there were 14.1% more repeat abortions.
And it means that 42.03% of abortions for residents of England and Wales were repeat abortions. That is, by all accounts, a staggering figure.
Abortion is also on the rise for reasons of disability. There were 3,205 disability-selective abortions in 2023, an increase of 81 from 2022.
We always hear that late-term abortions don’t happen. But they do, and the proof is in the statistics. “What woman would ever abort a baby at nine months?” is a fair question.
But there were 300 abortions recorded as being late-term on babies with disabilities at 24 weeks and over for residents of England and Wales – 44 more late-term babies died this way in 2023 (a 17.9% increase in late-term abortions for babies with disabilities at 24 weeks and over).
Within the statistics, there were 735 babies with Down’s Syndrome who were aborted. That may come as little surprise, given that it’s long been a headline that 90% of babies with the chromosomal condition are aborted in Britain. Ten of those babies with Down’s were aborted at 24 weeks and over (six months gestation).
Things show no sign of changing, but deteriorating further when the abortion up to birth amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, which the House of Lords is due to consider at Committee Stage on 27 January, becomes law.
Yes, here’s The Guardian’s response when it interviewed a staffer at abortion giant BPAS:
“These figures reflect the first full year of abortion care during the cost of living crisis, which is essential context for understanding the rise in abortion rates,” said Katie Saxon, the chief strategic communications officer at BPAS, one of the country’s largest abortion providers.
“No woman should have to end a pregnancy she would otherwise have continued purely for financial reasons. Equally, no woman should become pregnant because she is unable to access the contraception she wants, when she needs it.”
She added: “There is no right number of abortions, but there is much more that the government can do to ensure women are able to make the choice that is right for themselves and for their families.”
The left-leaning paper also interviewed Dr Alison Wright, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
“This new data highlights how access to high-quality abortion care is essential for women’s health and reproductive autonomy,” Wright said.
“There is likely to be a range of factors behind the rise in abortion rates over recent years. Economic pressure and the rising cost of living are shaping women’s reproductive choices, with many choosing to delay or have smaller families,” she added.
What a load of nonsense. To dismiss the ending of 300,000 lives in the womb as simply the reflection of a “cost of living crisis” is just so flippant.
They couldn’t care less. Abortion supporters believe there’s no such thing as a limit to abortion. Just as they will never baulk at the soaring number of abortion. Their abortion support is limitless.
BPAS is, after all, the same big abortion chain that demanded more taxpayer money for abortions in Britain with no regard to the pressure on the already struggling NHS.
BPAS and Marie Stopes both complained in 2022, then a year of record abortions in itself, that they were not being paid enough to carry out abortions. They wanted more money.
They have never once raised concerns that the rates are spiking year on year. They’ve never raised the alarm on the late-term abortions they perform. Nor do they have anything to say when women speak out about the trauma and grief and regret they experience afterwards.
TikTok and mumsnet are two platforms overflowing with content about abortion regret. Many admit crying for weeks and hoping desperately to fall pregnant soon after having an abortion to replace the baby they lost.
This kind of thing is all over the internet. The obvious question here is: surely they wouldn’t have had the abortion if they had proper therapy beforehand? But then again, there are so many worthy questions on this topic and not enough answers.
Domestic infant adoption has become so rare that the statistics are tiny. In the past year, only 96 children under the age of one were adopted in the UK, meaning it is virtually statistically almost impossible to adopt a newborn.
Compare that figure with 300,000 abortions. Placing a child for adoption in a crisis situation is a hugely difficult but honourable choice. It is not something to be oversimplified or talked about in an offhand way.
But society treats abortion like the obvious solution to the point where women rarely feel in a position where it’s even valid to consider adoption for their child when they do not feel in a positon to parent.
Everything is geared towards short-term ‘solutions.’ Just like we want our Amazon parcel to be delivered the very next day, women want abortion pills posted as soon as possible so they no longer have to deal with the inconvenience of a new life they have conceived.
Abortion has become all about speed and convenience. I highly doubt abortion providers like BPAS warn women of how they might feel later on down the line.
Meanwhile, celebrities like Lily Allen laugh on podcasts about having ‘four or five’ abortions. Allen made those comments in a chat with her friend Miquita, who added that she’d had about five too.
“I’m so happy I can say that and you can say it and no one came to shoot us down, no judgement. We’ve had about the same amount of abortions,” said Miquita.
Singing to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way,’ Allen went: “Abortions I’ve had a few… but then again… I can’t remember exactly how many.” Laughing, she continued: “I can’t remember. I think maybe like, “I want to say four or five.”
Lily recalled how she used to “get pregnant all the time” before she had an IUD coil fitted. Maybe this sounds like rage bait, but it’s not.
Because Lily’s own explanation provides a perfect insight into how thousands upon thousands of women react to unplanned pregnancy, and the reason why so many are having abortions.
It also shows how the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act, which was touted as a piece of law that would make abortion “safe, legal and rare” (key word being rare) have been utterly trashed.
For Lily, in her own words, it’s as simple as “Just: ‘I don’t want a f***ing baby right now.’ Literally: ‘“Don’t want a baby” is enough reason.” Whether we want to believe it or not, for many women, it’s the same. How can any sane person reach another conclusion when you look at those statistics?
In Britain, as in Ireland, saying “I don’t want a baby right now” is absolutely enough reason, for very many women and their partners, to have an abortion.
Creating and spreading this kind of broken mentality was the goal of abortion advocates all along, who duped the Irish public with emotional arguments about safeguards and hard cases.
I might sound like I am being harsh – but what is truly harsh is depriving 300,000 unborn babies of life, and staying absolutely silent when there appears to be no limit when it comes to abortion. Where are we going with this? How can we possibly sustain it? Is it a race to the bottom?
Abortion providers and campaigners can talk all they want about foetuses. But a foetus is simply a human being in the early stages of prenatal development and growth.
Of course if you let that foetus grow, you will end up with a bouncing baby. It does not magically become human if it’s a wanted pregnancy. And if you end the life of that foetus – sadly, yes, that is what abortion involves – then you are committing prenatal homicide and there is simply no getting away from that.
It carries a moral weight, which is why so many women struggle in the aftermath and why they deserve honesty in this conversation in the first place.
From a demographic point of view, we are increasingly doomed and that is in no small part thanks to abortion.
When we talk about Britain and Ireland’s falling birth rate, which has slumped below replacement, the conversation should not only be about people conceiving more children, but about the hundreds of thousands of already conceived children who are never born, and why that is.