OHID: “There were 277,970 abortions for residents of England and Wales in 2023, the highest number since the Abortion Act was introduced and an increase of 11% compared with 2022.” [i]
The government has just published the 2023 abortion statistics for England and Wales (15 January 2026). These were originally expected in June 2024 and being an annual report, should have been published no more than one year after the prior year. The 2022 report was published eleven months late in May 2024, since then it has taken the OHID twenty months to produce the 2023 data, and we still have no announcement of a release date for the 2024 data.[ii]
Across England and Wales in 2023, there were 277,970 abortions, a year-on-year increase of 10.6%, marking a continuing steep increase in annual totals, up by more than one-third (36%) in the last five years.
To be certain this increase is not solely a factor of increasing population, it is important that we also consider two other measures. First, the abortion rate, measured as the number of abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age (WRA) (15-44): in 2023 this was 23.0, up by 9% from 2022. Secondly, the ratio of abortions to live births: in 2023 this was 47 abortions per 100 live births, a 13% year-on-year increase — this rate of increase is higher because it is a factor of both the increasing numbers of abortions and a decline in the number of births.
The following graph shows the continuing annual increase of abortion in E&W across these three core measures.
Now that we have the official 2023 data for E&W, we can have confidence in estimating the 2024 total for the UK. Authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland have published their 2024 abortion statistics, noting year-on-year increases of 2.6% and 7% respectively. BPAS officially reported an increase of 3% in the year ending 31 March 2025 and, for the same period, MSI-RC reported an increase of 5%.
I estimate that in 2024, across the UK, there were 305,000 abortions; this is slightly higher than my estimate made last August, in this post: 300,000 abortions per year in the UK. It is worth noting that this is a conservative estimate, equivalent to an increase of just over 2% on the 2023 official published data — 2% is the historic average annual rate of increase.
Based on this estimate, in 2024, the rate of abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age in the UK was 22.4 — this rate has increased by 30% in the last five years.
In 2024, across the UK, there were 46.2 abortions for every 100 live births, meaning that one-third of all healthy pregnancies ended in abortion. More than any other metric, it is this that speaks most loudly about the increasing impact of abortion. Thirty years ago, in the mid 1990s, 1-in-5 of all healthy pregnancies were ended by abortion; it took until 2020 to reach 1-in-4 and just four years since then, we have reached 1-in-3.[iii]
This latest set of accredited official statistics confirms that across all four nations, across all abortion providers, and by all three core measures, abortion continues to increase, and in this year, one-in-three of all viable pregnancies will be ended by elective abortion.
[i] Abortion statistics commentary, England and Wales: 2023. (2026, January 15). GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2023/abortion-statistics-commentary-england-and-wales-2023#changes-in-the-2023-report
[ii] Duffy, K. (2025, November 1). 2023 abortion statistics now 10 months late. Percuity. https://percuity.blog/2025/09/17/2023-abortion-statistics-now-10-months-late/
[iii] Duffy, K. (2026, January 10). Ratio of abortions to live births. Percuity. https://percuity.blog/2025/11/18/ratio-of-abortions-to-live-births/
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