Debating life

The abortion debate continues, but with the continued absence of the key statistic. How many pregnancies in this country end in an abortion? In my experience, people guess at around 10% or lower. In fact it’s is one in four in England (26.1%) and one in three in London (33%). It’s hard to consider these statistics, from any perspective, without thinking something has gone badly wrong. The 1967 Act was intended to stop Vera Drake-style backstreet abortions, not provide a medical alternative to contraception.
 
The extent of abortion is seldom understood because the data is couched in a way no one can understand (17.8 many terminations per 1,000 women, whatever that means). But a meaningful figure may be a little too vivid for a debate still stultified by understandable squeamishness. I’ve never worked out why our MPs are so exercised by saving foxes, but recoil from the debate about where human life begins. As Dr Evan Harris and Ann Widdecombe agreed this morning, the debate is long overdue.