(LifeSiteNews) — In 2022, England and Wales set a bloody record: according to the Office for Health, 252,122 abortions were committed, the highest ever recorded. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) noted that this was a 17% surge over a year and that “these are not merely statistics, but precious and unrepeatable human lives. SPUC will not forget them.”
SPUC noted that the surge is largely due to “pills by post,” a scheme in which abortion pills can be ordered by mail and taken at home in “Do-It-Yourself” abortions. Abortion drugs or pills “accounted for 86% of all abortions, up from 48% in 2012, with a 9% increase in abortions being done at home between 2021 and 2012.” A staggering 61% of abortions now take place at home, meaning that many of the women aborting will actually see their dead children.
“Pro-abortion politicians should be ashamed of themselves for supporting disastrous measures that led us to this point: a quarter of a million aborted babies in twelve months,” a SPUC spokesperson stated. “Yet there are still MPs who, despite such an appalling loss of life, continue to support decriminalisation. There is something profoundly wrong about a society that looks on with indifference at such numbers. All these thousands of lives had a right to life, a life stolen from them before they ever had a name.”
SPUC, and other pro-life organizations, have consistently called on Health Secretary Victoria Atkins to end the “Do-It-Yourself” abortion scheme that was brought in as a temporary measure in to ensure that abortions would continue through COVID – but abortion activists have fought to keep the measure in place.
“This is what the abortion industry wanted all along—the proliferation of abortion at all costs,” SPUC stated. “In doing so, these ideologies, and the politicians that gave in to their demands, betrayed the women they purport to serve. The British public deserves to be made fully aware of the shocking reality of abortion, which kills hundreds of unborn babies every day at the abortion facility and inside the home.”
It isn’t just pill abortions, either. As Dr. Calum Miller noted, late-term abortions – defined as abortions past 20 weeks – are also on the rise, with 70% of these abortion being performed for social or economic reasons, not medical reasons. “That is 2,443 abortions past 20 weeks for social/economic reasons,” Miller wrote. “A 58% increase in late-term elective abortions!”
Referring to the U.K. government’s new data, Miller observed: “You can clearly see that there were 3,484 abortions after 20 weeks in the U.K. in 2022. But 2,443 were under the abortion on demand clause. Only 23 were [allegedly] to save the mother’s life, 4 were to prevent grave permanent injury, and 1,014 were for fetal disabilities. So 70% were for social/economic reasons. By 20 weeks, babies have all their major organs, they can feel pain, they are conscious, they can interact with their twin, they can taste food, they can hear the mother’s voice, and much more. By 22 weeks many are even viable outside the womb. That we are killing 2,443 babies a year at this stage of pregnancy for non-medical reasons is unconscionable.” Direct abortion is always gravely immoral and never needed nor ethically justified to save a mother’s life.
We are relentlessly told by the abortion industry, the press, and progressive politicians that “nobody” is having late-term abortions for elective reasons. We have known that is a lie for years. This recent U.K. data is simply more evidence of that. Since the 1967 Abortion Act, more than 10 million unborn babies have been killed by abortion. As pro-life leader Gregg Cunningham has observed, the sewers of our cities run red with the blood of unborn children.
