The number of abortions in England and Wales for 2023 could be as high as 325,000.
Official government data for January to June 2022 reported a staggering 17% increase over the same period in 2021.
On 22 November 2023, Parliament published written evidence submitted by MSI Reproductive Choices to the inquiry ‘Impact of the rising cost of living on women’. Citing the 17% rise in 2022 MSI-RC says:
“As a leading abortion provider [we have] seen an even bigger rise. For example, the first period in 2023 saw an increase of 32% compared with the same time period in 2022…
We are still waiting on the official 2022 full-year data from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID); the report was due to have been published in June 2023 but has been delayed until April 2024, which will make it ten-months late.
However, based on the OHID data for the first six months of 2022 and making an estimate for 2023 based on MSI’s written evidence, we can project a total of 325,000 abortions in 2023.[i]
Why?
MSI reports that as many as 45% of all unplanned pregnancies are met with “ambivalence”, which when combined with the spiralling cost-of-living crisis and deep-seated worries about not being able to afford the extra costs of having children, drives up the demand for abortion.
Regardless of your moral position on the issue of abortion, such a substantial increase in numbers should cause us all to pause; let us take time to carefully consider if we want abortion to be the answer to our current cost-of-living crisis.
[i] There were 214,256 abortions reported by OHID for 2021 and 123,219 for the first six months of 2022, which when projected for a FY gives a total of 246,438. Increasing that by 32% in 2023, as per MSI, gives a total of 325,298.
A 22% increase in 2023, significantly less than MSI states, is all that is required for the total annual number to break through the 300,000 level.
Percuity 