This week Right to Life UK marked the anniversary of the passage of the Abortion Act by noting that it had likely resulted in the deaths of nearly 11 million babies.
27 October was the 58th anniversary of the Act receiving royal assent and according to Right To Life UK, there have been 10,880,563 abortions since then.
With official data for 2023-2025 being currently unavailable, that figure was arrived at using the official data before that time and by assuming that the abortion figures for those years would be the same as in 2022.
Right To Life UK said the figure represented a baby being terminated in Britain every two minutes, with 31 killed every hour on average.
The 2022 figure was a record high, being up 17 per cent from 2021. This was due to at-home abortion services being available that year and may be a post-lockdown spike. However, the relaxed rules around at-home abortions introduced during covid remain in place, so it is entirely possible that the 2022 figure is a valid one to use as the basis for future projections.
The House of Lords is currently debating an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, passed by the House of Commons, that would remove all criminal sanctions for illegal abortions. Effectively the amendment would make abortion up to the point of birth legal.
Last week crossbench peer Lord Alton condemned the “grotesque measure”, saying that a Bill ostensibly about tackling crime and anti-social behaviour had been “hijacked” and turned into a vehicle for extreme pro-abortion views.
Right To Life UK has joined with Lord Alton in supporting amendments to the Bill that would reverse the Commons amendment and further reinstate the requirement that an in-person consultation with a medical professional take place before an abortion.
It points to opinion polls suggesting that only one per cent of Britain’s population want abortion up to the point of birth to be legalised, while 70 per cent of women actually want the abortion limit reduced from 24 weeks to 20 weeks or less.
Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, said, “Our abortion laws continue to fail both women and unborn babies. Since the Abortion Act received royal assent in 1967, a devastating 10,880,563 lives have been lost to abortion, each one a precious, unique and irreplaceable human being who was denied the right to life.
“Each of these abortions represents a collective failure of our society to protect the lives of babies in the womb and provide full support to women with unplanned pregnancies."
Robinson is calling on supporters to contact MPs and peers to encourage them to strengthen protections for the unborn and pregnant women.
