Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many terminations post-24 weeks’ gestation have been performed since the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 entered into force (1) in total, and (2) by year.

The Abortion Act 1967 requires that the Chief Medical Officer be legally notified of an abortion within 14 days of the termination. Statistical summaries of this data, which include the Grounds for the termination, are published annually. Statistics for years from 1968 to 1973 were published in the Registrar General’s Statistical Review of England and Wales, Supplement on Abortion. Statistics for years from 1974 to 2001 were published by the Office for National Statistics in its Abortion Statistics Series AB, Numbers 1 to 28. Since 2002, the Department has published an annual series of Abortion Statistics for England and Wales. All are publicly available, but for ease of reference the first three reports identifying abortions from 1991 onwards are attached.

Prior to 1991 abortion on the ground of a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped was classified as Section 1(1)(b).

The classification of abortions as Ground E (section 1(1)(d) of the Act) was introduced in April 1991. Data on the number of abortions by Ground is included in Table 1 of each of the attached documents. Information on the distribution of all post-24 week abortions and those under Ground E is included in Table D and the supporting text in each of the documents.