In November 2013, the campaign group Abortion Rights announced their first-ever student conference. It was, they explained, in response to ‘many student unions reporting increased anti-choice activity on campuses’. Societies such as Oxford Students for Life, which I’ve been part of for the last couple of years, don’t tend to think of themselves as ‘anti-choice’, but it’s true there are more of us around. The number of young people who are opposed to abortion, or at least worried about it, is growing — this despite the usual hostility from student unions.
Just look at the results of a ComRes survey conducted in April. Asked whether the abortion limit should be halved to 12 weeks, the most likely age group to agree were, by some distance, the 18- to 24-year-olds: 48 per cent said yes, only 26 per cent no.
Most — not all — of the other surveys I have seen show more unease about abortion among young people.
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