Abortion used as contraception.

London -- Emergency contraception has been heralded as the solution to rising abortion rates--but it does not work, says Professor Anna Glasier, director of Family Planning Services in Edinburgh. In the U.K., abortion rates have increased from 11 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1984 (136,400), to 17.8 per 1,000 women in 2004 (185,000). Add 8,000 abortions for nonresidents, mostly Irish. Two-thirds were done within the first nine weeks of pregnancy, indicating that abortion is used as a method of contraception.

Commenting on the data in the London Times (May 28, 2006), Katy Grant observes that the increase occurs despite the millions of pounds sterling spent on sex education and despite contraception being freely available. One minister's Advisory Committee is suggesting that school children from the age of eleven years and up should be given compulsory classes, with abortion as part of sex education. They wish to begin these with children as young as five. Phyllis Bowman of Right to Life said it was "stupid. They have had it pushed under their noses for 30 years; to say that young people do not know about abortion; they know only too much about abortion (Evening Standard, Sept. 8, 2006)."

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor met with the Secretary of Health in June, asking for a tightening of the law. He pointed out that it was not only a matter of religion but also a question of the common good of society. But the Labour party, like socialist parties across the world--including the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois in Canada--are too ideologically committed to understand the sociological disaster that is ahead.