Abortion rate highest ever - I'm sorry I just don't buy the reason suggested for this...

[CountessDracula]

"But pregnancy advice groups said the figures probably reflected poor access to contraceptive services"

What utter tosh

You can buy condoms in many loos in clubs and pubs. In any chemist or 24hour shop.

You have access to family planning clinics and doctors with free contraception

You can buy the morning after pill over the counter ffs

Shouldn't people take a bit more responsibility and get themselves to these places and get some bloody contraception?

I really don't understand what you're getting at with the age thing, abortion is there for people who want/need it and I don't think it helps to lump all of these people together into a Jeremy Kyle style trashy lifestyle. I do think that people should use contraception responsibly, obviously and hate the idea of abortion being used as contraception.

I'm a bit disheartened by the OP and subsequent posts.

More women are having abortions because the stigma around abortion is less. Thank god. Because the numbers of unwanted pregnancies I'm sure remain fairly consistent, and I would think it preferable to have an early termination than an unwanted child or worst of all attempts by the mother to miscarry.

There is a an awful lot of smug twuntery going on on this thread: oh, well I used contraception even when I was pissed or I got morning after pill. Good for you. Judging and condemning women and teenage girls that have abortions comes from a place which I consider a bit suspect.

but with rates this ridiculousy high??
Abortion may not carry the stigma in society but it still carrys a psychological burden throughout a womans life that the other forms of contraception just dont

'twuntery' does not come into it

Abortion rates like this are wrong

Are the number of unwanted pregnancies definitely the same? As with imafairy, growing up in Ireland in the 70s/80s, there was NO WAY I would have risked getting pregnant (abortion still not available there btw) and would say that as a result many young people were less sexually active than they are there today. Single parenthood is not as stigmatised as it once was so maybe people are more careless about the possibility of getting pregnant.....

Didin't see that thread you referred to imafairy - could you link please?

I had an abortion about two and a half years ago, i fell pregnant when my Dd was 8 weeks old, we were on holiday and had sex once.
I couldnt go through with another pregnancy for medical reasons, i had been gravely ill having Dd and have been advised not to have anymore children.

What i want to say is that in all the appointments i had befor the abortion and at the clinic on the day, i didnt see one teenage girl, they were all women my own age or older (im 30 now).

I even mentioned this in one of my appointments and the nurse told me, the majority of women that they see are 25 and over.

I see more and more young girls with children, and im beginning to wonder if its more to do with career choices iykwim.

No one's condemning others for having abortions.

Just the whatever-happened-to-safe-sex?

These can't all be the result of condom failure.

That's really, really alarming, because it means the message isn't getting out or people aren't heeding it.

And I've had drunken sex more often than not.

Loads of one-nighters I can't even remember who the hell they were, if I even ever knew.

But no bag, no shag.

We're not talking about rapes here, but on some level, you have to make a conscious decision about yourself and your health.

Also, another interested point brought up by countless threads on here is the lack of contraceptive choices for older women.

The combined Pill is out for most women over the age of 35, yet nearly all on offer besides that is progesten-based, a hormone that can produce profoundly unpleasant side effects in many women.

So they're left with very few choices in contraception.

v few drs offer some of the choices like mirena, which many of my older friends use v happily.

expat there's apparently a growing problem of older women being lackadaisical with contraception (Glasgow, I heard but not sure if that's because there was a study there..or was a particuarly Glaswegian phenomenon )

Now thats a bit of a myth too.

I can cheerfully say that I have never suffered a moment's doubt or psychological burden from the abortion I had. I profound sense of relief was my overwhelming feeling.

I have many friends who say exactly the same.

IMHO the 'psychological damage' argument against abortion is just another stick used by religious groups to beat us with for daring to take control over our own sexuality and reproductive life.

agreed expat.

What i find entirely objectionable is 'lazy or stupid' comments.

so there are MORE lazy and stupid women around who just don't use contraception because abortion is their contraception of choice? Have you ever had an abortion? That attitude is staggeringly Daily Mail.

And the inference, the insidious, and really gobsmacking inference of this thread is that you make abortion services harder to access isn't it?

Mirena is progesten-based, as is Depo, the implant and the mini-pill.

A lot of FPCs no longer provide the diaphragm or cervical cap.

So the only other non-hormonal option is the copper coil - which works by preventing implanation - sterilisation or condom.

But sophable surely you agree that not getting pg in the first place is better than having an abortion? I cannot believe that you don't

Anyway all I was debating was that it is bollocks that people don't have access to contracetion, which it is

Yes CD. but I totally and utterly disagree with your approach to this subject and your stance on this thread. Find it appalling actually.

But am still your friend

what you are appalled that I don't believe that people have adequate access to contracteption

freak

don't believe tha tpeople DON't have access even

In a society where contraception is more widely available than ever before, and where there is a greater variety of contraception than ever before, e.g. if the pill doesn?t work for you you can use a condom/diaframe etc, there is absolutely no reason why women need to be falling pregnant ?accidentally?. Yes contraceptives fail, but I simply do not believe that the failure rate of contraceptives is so high as to warrant such a vast increase in unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions.

I do think a lot of the issue is that women are increasingly using abortion as contraception, partly because it is more acceptable to have an abortion now, and partly because abortion is so easy to arrange. And for anyone who says that women don?t use abortion as contraception, yes they bloody do, I just think that it?s hard to accept that women choose to get rid of unwanted babies just because it?s not convenient for them. I know of at least two women who have had more than one abortion and who still aren?t careful because their attitude is ?well if I get pregnant I can just have an abortion?. Yes abortion affects a lot of women very deeply, but eqully there are women who feel that a baby isn?t even a baby when it is aborted and therefore they feel nothing.

People should be taking responsibility for their own actions, and if they can?t get hold of contraception here?s a novel idea, don?t have bloody sex.

I don't think these women are using abortion as contraception at all.

I think a) binge drinking and the binge drinking culture, especially it's increase among women (there's also a corresponding rise in the numbers of women being diagnosed with alcohol-related diseases like liver cirrhosis) b) lack of viable contraception for older women c) the increasing 'it's the end of the world as we know it' mentality all contribute to not using a condom or not using one properly.

NO I am appalled at comments like:

Presumably more shagging without contraception, so I guess laziness or stupidity or both??

Smug and judgemental doesn't begin to describe it does it?

well sophable you HAVE met me
You know I am judgemental
I just can't understand why when it is so readily available (much more so than when I were a young shagger) that people can't get some

BTW surely you do have to pay for abortions? (didn't someone say that you don't)

oi on msn

The patients who used Marie Stopes paid for their abortions.

These are not NHS stats.

iif someone has more than one abortion then IMO yes, they are using abortion as contraception.

If I got pregnant accidentally and ended up having a termination then I would make bloody sure it didn't happen again. it's not rocket science.

How about low self esteem in girls as a reason?

How many girls and women do you know who are so unable to stand up for themselves that they'd rather sleep with a bloke without protection because "He dosen't like them" rather than lose him?

I've been watching waaayyyy too much Jeremy Kyle

who is Jeremy Kyle?