Abortion: what it is, and the UK numbers

What abortion is

Abortion is the deliberate ending of a human pregnancy by killing the child in the womb. From fertilisation, that child is a living, whole, genetically distinct human being — not a potential human, but a human with potential. That is not a religious claim; it is the consistent testimony of embryology. The religious claim is what we say next: that this human being bears the image of God, and that killing him or her is an injustice that heaven notices.

How it is carried out

Which method is used follows how old the child is. All four are lawful in the United Kingdom today.

Chemical abortion

Medical abortion: mifepristone, then misoprostol. The method used in the large majority of UK abortions.

Mifepristone blocks progesterone — the hormone that maintains the lining of the womb and sustains the pregnancy. Deprived of it, the lining breaks down and the child dies. Misoprostol, taken a day or two later, makes the womb contract and expel the body.

Since 2020 both pills may be taken at home in England and Wales up to ten weeks’ gestation, dispatched by post after a telephone or video consultation. The mother miscarries her own child, usually at home, and frequently sees the body. Nothing about the word medical should be allowed to obscure what the drugs are for: the first one is given to end a life, and the second to deliver the remains.

Suction abortion

Surgical abortion: vacuum aspiration. Used to around fourteen weeks.

The cervix is dilated and a tube is passed into the womb. Suction many times stronger than a household vacuum cleaner tears the child from the wall of the uterus and draws the body out through the tube. At this age the body is small enough to pass through it, though rarely intact.

The contents are then examined to confirm that the uterus is empty. The staff who perform this procedure are looking, deliberately, for a complete set of a human being’s parts.

Dismemberment abortion

Surgical abortion: dilatation and evacuation. Used after around fourteen weeks.

By the second trimester the child’s bones have hardened and the body is too large and too firm to be drawn through a suction tube. The cervix is instead opened over a number of hours — sometimes over more than one day — and forceps are introduced into the womb to take hold of the child and remove him in pieces.

The parts are afterwards laid out and counted, so that the surgeon can be certain nothing has been left behind. That is the procedure, described in its own clinical terms. There is no version of these words that is not an account of a child being torn apart.

Lethal injection

Feticide: potassium chloride injected into the heart, before a late abortion.

From twenty-one weeks and six days, RCOG guidance is that the child should be killed before the abortion begins, so that no child is delivered alive. A needle is passed through the mother’s abdomen under ultrasound guidance and potassium chloride is injected into the child’s heart, stopping it. The sonographer watches the heartbeat cease. Labour is then induced, or the body removed surgically, and the child is delivered dead.

Potassium chloride is the agent used to stop the heart in judicial executions. Here it is used on a child who has committed no crime, and who is old enough that the ultrasound screen shows a face.

The UK numbers

• England and Wales (2023): 277,970 abortions — the highest ever recorded, up around 11% on 2022. Source: Department of Health and Social Care, Abortion statistics for England and Wales: 2023.
• Scotland (2023): 18,242 (2024: ~18,710). Source: Public Health Scotland, Termination of pregnancy statistics.
• Northern Ireland (2023/24): ~2,795. Source: NI Department of Health.
• UK total: roughly 299,000 a year — about 819 every day, 34 every hour, one every 105 seconds.
• Around 89% of abortions in England and Wales are performed at 9 weeks or earlier; a small number (~0.1%) occur at 24 weeks and over.
• Since the Abortion Act 1967 came into force in 1968, the cumulative total for Great Britain exceeds ten million children.

Every one of those numbers is a child with a name God knows.

Why we show you this

Numbers anaesthetise; that is why our home page turns the rate into a living map. One child every 105 seconds is not a statistic to file away — it is a neighbour to rescue (Proverbs 24:11).

Sources

• DHSC, Abortion statistics for England and Wales: 2023 (gov.uk)
• Public Health Scotland, Termination of pregnancy year ending December 2023
• Northern Ireland Department of Health abortion statistics