§ Lord Steel of Aikwoodasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will publish a table of statistics for the latest available year showing the national rates of medical termination of pregnancy in each member state of the European Union, and in the United States of America.
§ Lord McIntosh of HaringeyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the Chief Executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
67WALetter to Lord Steel of Aikwood from the Director of the Office for National Statistics, Dr. T. Holt.
I have been asked to reply, as Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), to your recent question on rates of medical termination in the European Union and United States of America.
The ONS, by arrangement with the Department of Health, produces statistics relating to legally induced abortions within England and Wales. Figures for 1996, the latest year for which data are available, show that the overall abortion rate for women resident in England and Wales was 13.0 abortions per 1,000 women aged 14–49, based on the mid–1995 population estimate.
Legally induced abortion numbers and population by sex and age for each member state of the European Union and the United States of America are published in the United Nations publication Demographic Yearbook 1995, 47th issue, the relevant pages of which have been placed in the Library of the House. However, it is unclear whether the number of abortions are for residents only or residents and non-residents combined. Therefore it does not seem practical to calculate the rates using the population estimates published for residents of these countries, and it is impossible to make a comparison between the rates for different countries.