Britain’s Abortion Boom
Britain's abortion rate now exceeds Russia's. One pregnancy in three ends in termination. The causes are grimly familiar: benefit cuts, rising costs, pills delivered by post. By Kaiser Bauch.
By Kaiser Bauch
“My husband and I worked at a shipbuilding plant… we suddenly didn’t get wages anymore. There was practically nothing to live on.”
Ekaterina, a Russian woman who lived through communism’s collapse.
The 1990s were a period of profound social crisis across much of the post-communist Eastern bloc. In the new Russian Federation also, a wide range of trends in social life abruptly worsened as the shocks of the unexpected regime change took a heavy toll on the population.
Alcoholism-related deaths and suicides were on the rise; the infant mortality rate, which had been declining throughout the 1980s, went into stagnation during the 1990s; abortion rates reached levels unseen since the 1960s, approaching 2,5 abortions for every live birth. Other post-Soviet states, such as Ukraine, or ex-eastern bloc countries like Romania, experienced a similar “abortion epidemic.”
Historically, several reasons have led to sudden spikes in the amount of abortions performed. The most obvious are legislative changes, particularly the lifting of a previous ban or the liberalisation of abortion laws. Such cases were observed in the United States following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Roe v. Wade case, in Romania in the 1990s, and more recently in Ireland, where abortion was legalised in 2018.
Another type of spike is connected to deliberate state efforts to reduce families’ sizes as part of broader modernisation strategies. Such increases occurred in China in the 1980s during the implementation of its one-child policy, and in South Korea during its rapid modernisation in the 1960s and 1970s, where the state’s pressure to lower fertility was substantial, even though less coercive than China’s. In both countries, this policy coincided with a deep-rooted cultural preference for male offspring, resulting in a high prevalence of sex-selective abortions. Today, a similar situation can be observed in Vietnam.
The third major cause consists of episodes of societal upheaval of the kind described in the opening paragraph—times of great insecurity and significantly worsening economic conditions.
The Surge
Something has shifted in Britain over the past decade. After a modest decline for about a decade, the number of abortions in the UK steadily began to climb from around 2016 onward—a trend that has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whether one considers either the absolute number of abortions, or the abortion rate per 1,000 women of childbearing age (hereafter simply the “abortion rate”), or the number of abortions per 100 live births (hereafter the “abortion ratio”), the general direction is clear: all three indicators are going up. In 2022, the abortion rate reached 20.7 and the abortion ratio, 40.2.
While the latest official government statistics are from 2022, unofficial projections for 2023 and 2024—based on data from various UK healthcare providers—have been produced by independent public health consultant Kevin Duffy. According to these projections, the number of abortions in 2024 reached 300,000, with an abortion rate of 22 and an abortion ratio of 46.6, representing a 16 % increase since 2022.
When official government reports are eventually published, the precise figures may differ from these projections, but a further increase is highly likely. Moreover, the 2022 data already represented the highest levels recorded in UK history. At present, roughly one third of viable pregnancies in the UK end in abortion.
At 22, the UK’s abortion rate is now the highest among all Western countries. The latest data from the Russian Federation—a former “abortion superpower”—show a rate of 13.1. In developed countries with comparatively low abortion rates, such as Germany or Italy, the figure is approximately 5. Among traditionally “high abortion” western countries such as France or Sweden, the contemporary rates are 17.1 and 18.2 respectively.
A Western Outlier
It is worth recalling that at the nadir of Russia’s social collapse in the 1990s, the abortion rate approached 100, while the abortion ratio came close to 250. Other Eastern bloc countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s also recorded abortion levels far exceeding those seen today in Britain (see table below). These, however, were societies in which abortion functioned as the primary form of contraception, largely because birth control pills were unavailable. For many women then, abortion was routine. In this respect, abortion rates in the Eastern bloc were uniquely high.
Nevertheless, even within the historical context of the Western world, current UK figures remain striking. Only one Western country has historically surpassed the UK’s current abortion rate: the United States during its peak in the early 1980s—a period characterised by widespread teenage pregnancy and limited access to contraception. The UK’s current abortion ratio is the highest ever recorded in any Western country, excluding former communist states.
Particularly notable is the rate of increase. Since 2016, the abortion rate has risen by 37%, while the abortion ratio has increased by 82%. This pace is comparable to that observed in South Korea between the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Yet South Korea at that time was undergoing an extraordinary process of economic and social transformation, moving within a single generation from a level of development comparable to that of sub-Saharan Africa to that of a developed country, while its fertility rate fell sharply within a single generation.
The UK, by contrast, is clearly not in the midst of a comparable period of breakneck modernisation and double-digit GDP growth. What, then, is driving the rapid rise in abortion in Britain?
A Perfect Storm
Several developments have taken place in the United Kingdom over the past decade. Since 2012, the country has experienced an increasingly rapid decline in birth rates. While the number of births fell by more than 100,000 between 2016 and 2024, the number of abortions rose by a similar magnitude, which explains the sharp increase in the abortion ratio.
Between 2015 and 2020, austerity measures reduced public health spending for sexual health services by £1 billion, or by 24%. The number of local authorities cutting down on or closing sexual health services rose by 167%. A 2022 survey found that close to half of women in the UK had experienced barriers to accessing contraception. At the same time, reflecting broader international trends, the use of hormonal contraception declined significantly among UK women, largely over concerns about side effects. Between 2018 and 2023, use of hormonal contraception at the time of conception saw a sharp decline.
