By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

New government data for 2009 has found that dozens of UK teens aged 17 or younger who terminated a pregnancy last year already had at least two previous abortions.

London’s Telegraph.co.uk is reporting that the Department of Health figures for 2009 show that, for the first time, more than a third (34 percent) of the 189,000 abortions performed in the country last year were on women who had already ended one or more pregnancies.

“Across all ages, more than 1,000 women or girls were on at least their fifth termination, including 214 on their sixth, 70 on their seventh and 48 who underwent the procedure for at least the eighth time,” the Telegraph reports.  This represents a 22 percent increase in repeat abortions in the last decade.

In 2009, almost 18,000 abortions were carried out on girls aged under 18 last year, including more than 1,000 on girls aged 14 or under, they report. A total of 89 girls under the age of 17 who had an abortion last year had at least two previous abortions.

Abortion proponents, such as Ann Furedi, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, are saying that repeated pregnancies among teenage girls is often caused by “chaotic lifestyles” which lead to them having difficulties using contraception.

“With teenage girls, often they feel able to handle sex, emotionally and physically, yet aren’t able to handle the planning that comes with contraception,” she said. 

However, the problem is much bigger, says Dr Peter Saunders, from the Christian Medical Fellowship. “It is increasingly clear that abortion is simply being used as a form of contraception by a growing percentage of girls and women, and that tired policies of values-free sex education, condoms and morning-after pills are not working,” he said.

The timing of the report could not be worse as it comes on the heels of last month’s controversy over the first ever television advertisement for abortion services to air in Britain.

But both sides of the abortion debate seem to agree on one thing –  that the new statistics present a “profoundly depressing picture of modern Britain.”

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