Abortion rate still at high level

A concern with green issues may be driving women away from drug-based methods of contraception to less reliable methods, a charity said yesterday after latest figures showed a continuing high rate of abortions.

The Birth Control Trust said that the 6.7 per cent rise in abortions in the first quarter of 1996, following the contraceptive pill scare of October 1995, had been maintained in the first quarter of 1997, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics published yesterday. This suggested that the 1996 rise in abortions was not a blip which could be pinned on the Pill panic, which linked some types of the contraceptive pill with an increased risk of thrombosis, but reflected underlying trends.

The charity said the high profile of abortion in public debate "could have led some women to consider it as an option whereas that might not have been the case before". Jeremy Laurance