Abortion statistics, England and Wales: 2018
Back to Topic
Click to Print
Useful Websites
Glossary Term Selection
An extract from summary information from the abortion notification forms returned to the Chief Medical Officers of England and Wales.
Overall number and rate of abortions
In total, there were 205,295 abortions notified as taking place in England and Wales in 2018, of which 200,608 were to residents of England and Wales. This represents an age-standardised abortion rate of 17.4 per 1,000 resident women aged 15–443. The 2018 rate has increased since 2017 (16.7 per 1,000 resident women aged 15–44) but is lower than the peak in 2007 of 17.9 abortions per 1,000 resident women.
Age
The abortion rate in 2018 was highest for women at the age of 21 (at 30.7 per 1,000 women). Last year the highest rate was for women aged 20 (29.1 per 1,000 women).
There were 1,267 abortions to girls aged under 16 (0.6% of the total). Of these, 363 were to girls aged under 15 (0.2% of the total). There were also 746 to women aged 45 or over (0.4%). (Table 4a).
Abortion rates for those aged under 18 have declin...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites
