Claims of “Thousands” Travelling to Britain for Abortion Bogus

Claims of “Thousands” Travelling to Britain for Abortion Bogus, Statistics Show: Statistics from the UK’s Department of Health disprove claims made by a Polish abortion lobby group that 10,000 Polish women are coming to Britain to abort their children annually. In March, the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning came under heavy criticism in Britain when it ran an ad campaign in Poland encouraging women to seek abortions in the UK. The ads were intended to promote the idea that women are being unfairly treated by Poland’s laws restricting abortion to cases in which the mother’s “life or health” is threatened by pregnancy.

While no official estimate for the number of abortions committed on Polish women for the whole of the UK exists, Department of Health statistics show that only 20 Polish residents had abortions at public expense in England and Wales in 2009. This accounts for 0.3 per cent of all abortions on non-resident women.