Abortion, sexual assault and lack of respect for women

Office for National Statistics figures in the UK show that ‘one in three women becoming pregnant for the first time in their twenties will have an abortion’; among 20 to 24-year-olds, the rate of conceptions leading to abortion ‘reached 33.2 per cent in 2017, an increase on 31.6 per cent in 2016’, against a background of ‘a record rise in the number of terminations for women aged between 16 and 34 since 1990’, albeit with ‘a rapid decline in teenage abortions over the last 10 years’; Imogen Stephens, medical director of Marie Stopes UK said the rise ‘may be connected to “sustained funding cuts” to the public health budget’, adding that ‘[anything that limits access to contraception is enormously concerning”’ as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists ‘reported two thirds of local councils have cut their sexual and reproductive health budgets since 2016/17’ (‘Rise in abortion rate blamed on sexual health funding cuts’, Telegraph, April 16, 2019).

However, the rapid decline in abortions among teenagers, who are less likely to have access to contraception unless specifically targeted, suggests that contraception is helping to drive the demand for abortion, rather than preventing it. 

Health minister Jackie Doyle-Price has pointed out that ‘dating apps such as Tinder are fuelling a rise in unplanned pregnancies among women in their 30s’, because ‘women start “playing the field again” far sooner after a relationship ends, meaning they manage contraception less effectively’; this ‘partly explained the fact that the growth in unplanned pregnancies is no longer among teenagers, but women in their 30s.’ 

She suggested that women should be more ‘“pushy”’ with health care providers, while failing to mention the role of men in generating these babies - some of them conceived via sexual crime, in which dating websites also play a part (‘Sex crimes linked to online dating websites double’, Telegraph, April 15, 2019).

The only time fathers are mentioned by abortion campaigners is to insist that they ‘keep out of’ a ‘women’s right to choose’, but from school sex education lessons young men absorb the message that as long as contraception is used, no commitment is required for a sexual relationship – indeed, if a woman is using contraception, she must be ‘up for it’.

This outlook was highlighted in the case of Alex Hepburn, a professional cricketer convicted of rape, who ‘molested a sleeping woman as part of a WhatsApp sexual conquest game’ in which he and other group members ‘agreed to challenge each other to see who could sleep with the most women’; Hepburn ‘set the rules’ for this ‘game’ only ‘four days before the rape took place’, in one message suggesting ‘he had slept with 60 women since the start of the cricket season’ (‘Cricketer guilty of Whats App sex game rape’, Telegraph, April 13, 2019).

We do not know how many of these women subsequently had abortions, and  like the abortion campaign Ms Doyle-Price is not so ‘pushy’ when it comes to challenging such attitudes, or questioning the role of sexual assault in our rocketing abortion figures. 

Abortion providers like Marie Stopes UK have failed to demand that men take responsibility for the women they sleep with and the children they father, and as became clear from the decades-long scandal of organised child sexual abuse in this country, under-age girls have been provided with birth control and abortions so they could continue to be abused; and when confronted with the problem of repeat abortion the abortion lobby’s solution is to effectively sterilise young girls with long-term contraception because in their 'chaotic lives' it means they do not have to remember to take the Pill.

In the face of high and ever-increasing numbers of abortions, they express no regret and no shame, even as abortion is used to cover up sexual crime; instead they seek to normalise abortion, their main source of (state) income, while supporting campaigns to completely decriminalise it. 

Abortion is the ultimate form of birth control and it seems that taxpayers will be forced to massively subsidise it as long as governments refuse to teach self control in schools and fail to promote commitment in society – even while they lecture us on the need for self control in eating, drinking and smoking.