By Dave Andrusko
Abortions secured from Department of Health figures by the British newspaper The Sun have revealed that a British schoolgirl had her fourth abortion before her sixteenth birthday.
“The unnamed teenager, who underwent her fourth termination in 2012, is among more than 200 under-16s to have had repeat abortions in the past three years,” according to Sophie Jane Evans of The Daily Mail. “Shockingly, a further five of these girls had three abortions before reaching the age of consent.”
Additional numbers help explain and give substance to the “concern that terminations are being used by teenagers as an alternative form of contraception.”
For example, 84 girls under the age of 16 had a second (or more) abortion in 2011, according to the Department of Health figures. In 2012 that number increased to 89 (out of 2,925 under-16s) but, thankfully, in 2013, the number dropped to 68 (of a total 2,538 under-16s).
In 2013, 85,331 British women of all age groups had abortions. “Of these,” Evans wrote, “50 were treated for a staggering nine abortions of more.”
Over the past eighteen months, the discussion of abortion has received a prominence not seen for many years.
Part of that is because an undercover investigation by The Daily Telegraph revealed that there are abortionists who will abort a child when the mother says she does not want a girl. When the Crown Prosecution Service refused to punish anyone, the controversy only grew.
In addition, in theory a woman cannot have an abortion unless two doctors sign a special form to say that the conditions laid down in the Abortion Act apply. What had happened, according to Dr. Peter Saunders, is “that doctors had gone through and pre-signed a whole load of forms without seeing the women concerned.”
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As we noted back in May, the scandal was two-fold. Not only had at least 67 abortionists illegally signed blank abortion forms for women seeking abortions, they went unpunished by the General Medical Council (GMC). Again, another example of abortion out-of-control.
But add to that a story that recently ran in The Daily Express under the headline “SHOCKED MPs have called for a change to Britain’s ‘medieval and cruel’ abortion laws after a termination was carried out on a baby only days before it was due to be born.”
In 2013 there were 190 abortions beyond what is ostensibly the limit—24 weeks. But according to Caroline Wheeler of The Daily Express, “Department of Health figures show that last year a further three abortions were carried out on mothers who were 38 weeks pregnant and two more on women 37 weeks into pregnancy.”
(How can that be? Because their abortion law has a colossal loophole that allows abortions up until birth if there is “substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped” –the notorious “Ground E.” Disability is flexibly defined and its usage very much under-reported.)
And speaking of teenagers, as the Daily Mail reminded us today, “Earlier this year, a 13-year-old schoolgirl was given the right to choose whether to have an abortion by a High Court judge.”
When the case went before the High Court as an emergency hearing in mid-March, “A” was already 21 weeks pregnant. Justice Nicholas Mostyn ’s decision did not come until May.